ZAPORIZHZHIA REGION, Ukraine >> In a thicket of trees between two vast farm fields, a plywood trapdoor built into the forest floor opened to reveal stairs leading underground.

Inside was a subterranean bunker, cut into the black earth, where Ukrainian troops from a mortar unit awaited coordinates for their next target. The men squeezed past one another down a shoulder-width dirt corridor lit with LED strips, staring at tablet computers showing a live drone feed of the terrain outside. Blast waves from artillery shells and rockets shook the bunker, and a radio crackled with a warning of incoming Russian helicopters.

But the soldiers were focused on their screens, specifically on a line of Russian troops and heavy equipment dug in a short distance away and marked with red plus signs.

That would be their target.

“The guys dug all this by hand, and they want to fight, they want to shoot,” said the unit commander, a 32-year-old with a braided ponytail who uses the call sign Shuler. “We just want to kick them off our land; that’s it.”

For the soldiers of the 110th Territorial Defense Brigade, to which the mortar unit is attached, this is a critical moment in the war.

With fighting in the eastern Donbas region settling into a bloody stalemate, their patch of the Zaporizhzhia region of southeastern Ukraine could prove to be the next big theater, a focal point of a long-awaited counteroffensive. Ukraine is under pressure to show some measure of success in bolstering morale for soldiers and civilians, shoring up Western support and reclaiming stolen territory.

The fighting here is intensely personal. Most of the soldiers of the 110th Brigade come from areas now occupied by Russia. Shuler’s unit was forced to retreat in the early days of the war, which began in February 2022, and his parents remain in occupied Melitopol, roughly 80 miles from the bunker.

Over the past year, the unit slowly has turned the tide, halting the Russian advance and building a network of defensive positions that the Russian military, for all its superiority in weaponry and numbers, has been unable to crack.

Ready for more action

The incoming shells howled overhead, their explosions getting closer and closer as Russian troops stationed about 1 mile away adjusted their cannon’s trajectory.

But the Ukrainian artillery team positioned to return fire was unfazed. The men joked as they loaded shells into their Australian-made howitzer in the shade of a cherry tree, swatting away bees that hummed around its white spring blooms. They fired. And fired again.

After the fifth round, the Russian side fell silent.

These Ukrainian soldiers are part of an elite, British-trained artillery unit attached to an airborne assault brigade. A month ago, they were stationed near Bakhmut burning through 1,000 shells a week as they mowed down waves of Russian infantry. And before that, they took part in the liberation of Kherson.

Given their skills and experience, it was puzzling to some of them why they were sent to this corner of the war.

“Maybe it is connected with our offensive. Maybe it is a distraction maneuver,” said a junior sergeant with the unit, named Maksim, who goes by the call sign Stayer. “We don’t see the whole picture.”

The Russian military clearly believes that the Zaporizhzhia region is critical to the war. After a winter hiatus, Russian forces have begun to pound Ukrainian military positions, as well as cities and towns, with an array of weaponry, including artillery shells, guided missiles and Iranian-made explosive drones.

This could be a sign that Russian forces are preparing for their own assault — or anticipating a Ukrainian one.

Stayer, 39, said his men were ready for more action.

“When there’s an offensive, there’s movement; it’s fun,” he said. “You’re shooting at them; they’re shooting at you.”

In Bakhmut, there was never even time to sleep, Stayer said. The muck and fatigue of battle had so changed his appearance that his iPhone’s face recognition system ceased to work for a bit, he said. Inside his phone was a horror show: drone photographs of fields littered with Russian bodies blown apart by the mortars his team had fired at them.

In Zaporizhzhia, Stayer has enough time in between artillery volleys to run 10 kilometers every other day and indulge his passion for coffee, which he has delivered from a specialty roaster called Mad Heads in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

The counteroffensive, though, is on everyone’s minds, he said. Using a rock, Stayer drew on the wet ground what he thought the outlines of an operation might entail: a push south toward the port city of Berdiansk, accompanied by feints on the eastern front and perhaps an attempt by Ukrainian forces stationed in Kherson to cross the Dnieper River to attack Russian forces dug in on the eastern bank.

“It all looks very simple,” he said. “We’re waiting to see what our high command comes up with, some kind of clever plan.”