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In some of the most intense footage we have seen since Russia began its all-out invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago, a team from the Ukrainian 73rd Naval Special Operations Center (NSOC) is seen wiping out Russian troops in a trench somewhere on the southern front of the ongoing counteroffensive.

The video shows combat strikingly reminiscent of the brutal close-quarters fighting that took place in the trenches of France during WWI. The video looks more like a scene from 1917 then from a modern battlefield. In this 1-minute-57-second video segment, the Ukrainian special operators - roughly equivalent to U.S. Navy SEALs - enter the trench and one by one kill Russian troops as they snake through the labyrinth of tight, blind corners.

Editor's note: the video in this below contains extremely graphic scenes of combat. Viewer discretion is highly advised:

The video, taken by one of the operators wearing a helmet-mounted camera, begins with the 73rd NSOC team approaching the deeply dug trench complex and opening fire while turning left at the entrance. As the team continues a short distance down the trench, a Russian soldier appears from around the corner and is immediately shot dead. He slumps to the ground face down and is shot a few more times to ensure he is no longer a threat.

About 69 seconds into the video, two more Russian soldiers approach the Ukrainians from another section of trench and are also quickly gunned down. Some 10 seconds later, a Ukrainian operator is seen tossing a grenade into the trench network. About 10 seconds after that, another grenade is tossed.

At about 87 seconds into the video, there is a right orange-yellow flash, followed by the sounds of shouting and more gunfire, though what happens next is unclear.

In a post on its Telegram channel Monday where the video first appeared, the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (SSO) claimed the team entered the trench from the rear, surprised its occupants, and killed 10 Russians.

"In the south, during the mission, the operators of the special purpose marine center were able to enter the rear of the enemy," the SSO said on its Telegram channel. "A combat group of SSO soldiers caught the enemy by surprise. Recovering from the surprise, some enemy soldiers tried to resist. But, as you can see from the video shot by one of our soldiers - in vain."

The graphic video underlines the chaotic and brutal nature of warfare the claustrophobic horror of fighting in trenches and the sudden immediacy of death. Though technology has changed greatly since the "Great War" - allowing us rapid access to such scenes, for one - the human element of combat and the horrors that go along with it remains the same.

Yuriy Butusov, editor of the Ukrainian CENSOR.net news outlet who has seen plenty of combat footage, was particularly moved by what he saw in this video.

One of the most stunning close-quarters battles captured on video in the history of modern wars, he said.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

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Horrors Of Trench Warfare Captured In Viral Ukrainian Special Ops Footage - The War Zone

The caskets of Bohdan Didukh and Oleh Didukh, Ukrainian soldiers who shared a last name but were unrelated, are carried out of Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church for their joint funeral on Monday.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

LVIV, Ukraine As the bodies of fallen soldiers steadily fill up a hillside at a military cemetery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the old unmarked graves of those killed in past wars are being exhumed to make way for a seemingly endless stream of dead since Russias invasion of Ukraine.

On Monday afternoon, half a dozen gravediggers took a break in the shade, waiting for the latest coffin they would inter at the Lychakiv Cemetery. Smoking cigarettes and shielding themselves from the sun, they lamented the devastation that Russia had wrought. They said they were bracing for more deaths as fighting grows more intense during Ukraines counteroffensive.

On a sloping hillside, two men who died hundreds of miles apart were buried next to each other. Bohdan Didukh, 34, was killed by a mine last week on the front lines of the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine, where the first stages of Ukraines counteroffensive have begun. Three days later, Oleh Didukh, 52, died of a heart attack while serving in an air defense unit in the relative safety of the countrys west.

On Monday, they were honored side by side in a joint funeral in Lviv. Both of their families were overcome with grief as the soil shoveled on top of the two coffins landed with a succession of thuds. The men, who shared the same last name but never knew each other in life, were united in death in the service of their country.

One of the hard realities of Russias war in Ukraine is that even in a city far from active fighting, such as Lviv, soldiers killed on the front lines over the course of the 15-month-long conflict are returned to their hometowns, sometimes in groups, and laid to rest at the same time. It is seen as an efficient way to get through so many funerals when the dead keep coming.

At the funeral service for the two men in a Greek Catholic church in central Lviv, incense filling the air, the priest said that he had assumed the pair were father and son because of their names and ages. Though their families were not related, they were joined by their pain, he said.

Funerals for fallen soldiers have taken on a grim routine in Lviv. After the church ceremony, the coffins were loaded into vans and driven to the central square where a single trumpeter played. Then the cortege made its way to the graveyard.

Along the route to the cemetery, residents paused to pay their respects. A young girl stood next to her father, a small brown shopping bag in her hand, staring straight ahead as the coffins passed by. Some bystanders fell to their knees.

At the cemetery, Olena Didukh, the wife of Bohdan Didukh, fainted momentarily, overwhelmed by grief and the afternoon sun. Her sister steadied her, wrapping her arm around her back.

Kateryna Havrylenko, 50, who works for the city maintaining the graves, loaded soil onto a wheelbarrow. There are funerals here nearly every day, she said.

With the counteroffensive, many young men and women will be killed, she said. Words cannot express how difficult it is. Very, very difficult. Even though they are strangers, they are someones children, just like I have a child.

At the top of the hillside, city officials have begun exhuming the unmarked graves of soldiers who were buried as long ago as during World War I, young men who died at the start of the last century making way for those who have fallen in this war.

At the start of the war with Russia last year, there was just a small cluster of freshly dug graves on a hillside in one part of the cemetery. Now, nearly 500 soldiers have been buried here in plots filling half the hillside, she said, and more will come.

It is just so hard to think last summer, there were so few. And now there are so many. With a faraway look, she added: And until the war ends, how many more will there be?

Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting.

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Ukraine Confirms Another Small Gain in the South - The New York Times

All the latest developments from the war in Ukraine.

"Massive" Russian attacks targeted Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities of Lviv and Zaporizhia overnight from Monday to Tuesday, according to authorities.

Explosive drones attacked Ukraine's capital in waves from multiple directions, wrote the city's military administration on Telegram, adding the alert had lasted more than three hours.

In the western city of Lviv, "critical infrastructure" was hit by drones, said the head of the regional administration, Maksym Kozytskyi.

Meanwhile, authorities in Zaporizhia said the city had been subjected to a "massive attack" aimed at civilian objectives, including residential suburbs.

The Ukrainian General Staff later claimed the country's air defences shot down 28 out of 30 drones launched by Russian forces overnight.

No casualties were immediately reported.

Navalny urges anti-war campaign

Alexei Navalny urged his supporters on Monday to begin a broad campaign against Moscow's actions in Ukraine.

The imprisoned Russian opposition leader made the remarks as he went on trial on new charges of extremism that could keep him behind bars for decades.

Navalny said the anti-war effort must reach out to millions and explain the disastrous impact of the fighting and combat Putin's lies and the Kremlin's hypocrisy.

He argued that despite a relentless crackdown on dissent, such a campaign could be efficiently conducted on messaging apps outside the authorities' control.

No one but us could enter this fight for our citizens' hearts and minds, so we need to do it and win, Navalny said.

Soon after it started, the judge closed the trial despite his demand to keep it open.

In a statement posted on social media by his allies, Navalny declared the decision to close the trial was a sign of fear by President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny, who exposed official corruption and organised major anti-Kremlin protests, was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recovering from nerve agent poisoning in Germany.

'Biggest' counteroffensive blow awaits Russia, says Ukraine

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said the "biggest blow" in Kyiv's military campaign is yet to come, but admitted the operation is difficult, as Russia mounts stiff resistance.

"The ongoing operation has several objectives, and the military is fulfilling these tasks," Maliar wrote on Telegram. "They are moving as they should have been moving. And the biggest blow is yet to come."

After months of acquiring Western weaponry, training and preparations, Ukraine began the first stage of its counteroffensive two weeks ago to reclaim the nearly fifth of its land now occupied by Russia.

"The enemy will not easily give up their positions, and we must prepare ourselves for a tough duel," Maliar said. "In fact, that is what is happening right now,"

The Ukrainian military, which had maintained strict silence about the campaign, has claimed small victories, claiming on Monday it had liberated several small settlements.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said late last week the Ukrainian counteroffensive did not have any meaningful success.

Officials and some Russian military bloggers say Kyiv has made small gains at the expense of huge troop and equipment losses.

Euronews cannot verify these claims.

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Ukraine war: 'Biggest' offensive blow awaits Russia, night attacks, Navalny anti-war campaign - Euronews

https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-counteroffensive-casualties-5ea704de519ba8fb08740f7252d800c9

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A Ukrainian serviceman of the 68th Oleksa Dovbush hunting brigade runs to his position in the recently retaken village of Blahodatne, Ukraine, Saturday, June 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

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A Ukrainian serviceman of the 68th Oleksa Dovbush hunting brigade runs to his position in the recently retaken village of Blahodatne, Ukraine, Saturday, June 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) Russia and Ukraine are suffering high numbers of military casualties as Ukraine fights to dislodge the Kremlins forces from occupied areas in the early stages of its counteroffensive, British officials said Sunday.

Russian losses are probably at their highest level since the peak of the battle for Bakhmut in March, U.K. military officials said in their regular assessment.

According to British intelligence, the most intense fighting has centered on the southeastern Zaporizhzhia province, around Bakhmut and further west in Ukraines eastern Donetsk province. While the update reported that Ukraine was on the offensive in these areas and had made small advances, it said that Russian forces were conducting relatively effective defensive operations in Ukraines south.

The Ukrainian military said in a regular update Sunday morning that over the previous 24 hours Russia had carried out 43 airstrikes, four missile strikes and 51 attacks from multiple rocket launchers. According to the statement by the General Staff, Russia continues to concentrate its efforts on offensive operations in Ukraines industrial east, focusing attacks around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Marinka and Lyman in Donetsk province, with 26 combat clashes taking place.

Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that two civilians were killed, with a further three wounded in the past day.

Ukrainian officials said Russian forces also launched airstrikes on other regions of the east and south of the country.

One civilian was killed and four more wounded in Kherson province as a result of Russias attacks, said regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin, while Zaporizhzhia regional Gov. Yurii Malashko said one person was wounded in Russian attacks that hit 20 settlements in the province.

Vladimir Rogov, an official with the Moscow-appointed administration in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region, said Sunday that Ukrainian forces had taken control of the village of Piatykhatky on the Zaporizhzhia battlefront.

Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson of the regional government in the southwestern Odesa province, said Ukrainian forces destroyed a very significant ammunition depot near the Russian-occupied port city of Henichesk in nearby Kherson province.

Our armed forces dealt a good blow in the morning, Bratchuk said in a video message on Sunday morning, posted to his Telegram channel.

Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that Ukraines counteroffensive to dislodge the Kremlins forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, could last a long time.

A group of African leaders carried out a self-styled peace mission to both Ukraine and Russia in recent days to try to help end their nearly 16-month-old war, but the visit ended on Saturday with no immediate signs of progress.

In other developments:

Volodymyr Artyukh, the governor of Ukraines northern Sumy region, which borders Russia, said a father and his son were killed by Russian shelling of the village of Bilopilya. Across the border, Ukrainian shelling hit three villages in Russias Kursk region, said its governor Roman Starovoit.

The death toll from flooding following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam has risen to 16 in Ukrainian-held territory, Ukraines interior ministry said late Saturday, while Russian officials said 29 people died in territories controlled by Moscow.

Massive flooding from the destruction of the dam on June 6 devastated towns along the lower Dnieper River in Kherson province, a front line in the war. Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of causing the breach.

As the deadline for all Russian volunteer formations to sign contracts with Russias Defense Ministry approaches, widely seen as targeting Russias Wagner mercenary group, Wagner leader and regular Kremlin critic Yevgeny Prigozhin said Sunday that 32,000 former prisoners had returned home after the end of their contracts with Wagner in Ukraine.

According to Prigozhin, 83 crimes were committed by those who had returned home, which he claimed was 80 times less than the number committed by those released from prison over the same period without having served with Wagner.

Prigozhin toured Russian prisons to recruit fighters, promising pardons if they survived a half-year tour of front-line duty with Wagner. In an interview last month, Prigozhin said he had recruited 50,000 convicts, about 10,000 of whom were killed in Bakhmut.

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Follow APs coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Both sides suffer heavy casualties as Ukraine strikes back against Russia, UK assessment says - The Associated Press

Ukrainian forces have retaken a small village in the south of the country, a localRussian official and military bloggers said on Sunday, one of the first reports of a territorial gain in the Zaporizhzhia region since the start of a major counteroffensive earlier this month.

Vladimir Rogov, a Kremlin-appointed regional official, said on the Telegram messaging app that Ukrainian troops had taken the village of Piatykhatky under operational control, and were entrenching themselves there. Russian forces, he added, were using artillery fire in an attempt to wrest it back.

There was no independent confirmation of those claims. The Ukrainian militarys nightly General Staff update said Russian forces were on the defensive in the region, but made no mention of the village.

Piatykhatky is one of many villages along the southern frontline and its recapture, if confirmed, is unlikely to represent a major military breakthrough for Ukraine. Still, it would be the first village retaken in recent days, and add to the seven villages that Ukrainian officials said they had recaptured further east in the Donetsk region as part of the counteroffensive that began about a week and a half ago.

Our troops are advancing, position by position, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in his nightly address on Sunday. Step by step, we are moving forward.

Those gains so far have come at the cost of Ukrainian lives and advanced Western equipment, but military analysts caution that it could take weeks or months to gauge the success of the counteroffensive.

An official statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense summarizing the fighting on Sunday said that an attack on Piatykhatky had been repelled. But Russian military bloggers, who are often the first to announce battlefield developments in Ukraine, said Moscows forces had lost the village after three days of intense fighting.

Our artillery continues to strike at the enemy infantry, entrenched in this village, wrote Semyon Pegov, who writes under the name War Gonzo and has more than 1.3 million followers on Telegram. Mr. Pegov was among the pro-Kremlin war correspondents who met with President Vladimir V. Putin last week.

Mikhail Zvinchuk, who writes under the pseudonym Rybar, said that Russian units had retreated from the village, but that the fighting continued on its outskirts. Another blog called A Veterans Notes, which aggregates other reports along with some commentary and analysis, described ferocious fighting in the area.

A large Ukrainian force was making a sustained attempt to break through Russias defensive lines, the unnamed blogger wrote, with losses on both sides and the stench of dead bodies drifting over the battlefield. Many wounded due to continuous artillery shelling, the account said.

Ukraines counteroffensive has intensified the fighting at several points along the front line in the south, but has shown little sign of a significant breakthrough so far. A British defense intelligence report said on Sunday that both sides were suffering high casualties and military experts say that it is likely that months of artillery duels and trench warfare lie ahead. Independent analysts say that it will be difficult for Ukrainian forces to break through heavily fortified Russian lines defended by tank traps, minefields and artillery.

In hopes of making it harder for Russia to fend off the counterattack, Ukraine has followed a pattern it established last year of launching a series of strikes behind the front lines that target ammunition dumps, military infrastructure and other elements of Moscows war machine.

Military officials said on Sunday that Ukraine had struck an ammunition dump near the village of Rykove, in the Kherson region. The claims could not be immediately verified, but satellite imagery reviewed by The Times showed heavy damage in an industrial area adjacent to a rail line in Rykove, with smoke still rising from the debris on Sunday morning.

Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa military administration, posted video footage on the Telegram messaging app that was taken from a distance but appeared to show a large fire and smoke billowing above fields.

Our armed forces dealt a good blow in the morning, and a very loud one, in the village of Rykove, Mr. Bratchuk wrote. There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities.

The area is significant because it is close to a bridge connecting Crimea which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 with a belt of land occupied by Russia north of the Sea of Azov. Military analysts say that one of the probable goals of the counteroffensive is to cut the land bridge that connects Crimea to Russia.

Rykove is about 70 miles behind the closest area of the front line, the Dnipro River, where Ukrainian forces control the west bank and Russian forces the east. It was not clear how the attack took place, but that would put the village in the range of an attack by a long-range Storm Shadow missile, which Britain said in recent weeks it had donated to Ukraine. The U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket is also capable of hitting targets dozens of miles behind the front lines.

Dam disaster: As Ukraine pursues its counteroffensive, it continues to deal with the aftermath of an explosion on June 6 that destroyed the Kakhovka dam on the lower Dnipro River, flooding parts of the Kherson region and elsewhere and causing environmental devastation.

The death toll continued to climb on Sunday. In the Ukrainian-held territory, 17 people have died in the flooding and 31 others are missing, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a Telegram post. In the Russia-occupied portion of the Kherson region, a Kremlin-backed official, Andrei Alekseyenko, reported six more deaths, raising the death toll to 35.

Moscow has blamed Ukraine for the explosion, but evidence suggests that the dam, which was controlled by Russian forces, was destroyed from within.

Denise Brown, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine, said in a statement on Sunday that the Kremlin had declined a request to access Russian-controlled areas to provide emergency assistance. Aid cannot be denied to people who need it, she said.

Border shelling: Ukrainian and Russian officials reported shelling in civilian areas on both sides of Ukraines northeastern border on Sunday. Roman Starovoit, the governor of Russias Kursk region, said that Ukraine had targeted three settlements in the Glushkovsky district. Across the border, about 40 miles away, a father and his 4-year-old son were killed by shelling in Ukraines Sumy region, the countrys Ministry of Internal Affairs said.

NATO membership: President Biden has been facing pressure from Ukraines allies to hasten Ukraines NATO membership bid and offer a more certain path to joining the alliance, but he has not yet changed his stance. On Saturday, Mr. Biden appeared to reinforce that position, suggesting that there would be no quick route for Ukraine, which submitted an application to join the alliance last September.

Theyve got to meet the same standards. So were not going to make it easy, the president told reporters. Membership in the alliance, which would put Ukraine under NATOs security umbrella, is viewed by Mr. Zelensky as a core strategic objective. It will probably be discussed next month at a NATO summit in Lithuania.

Gabriela S Pessoa contributed reporting.

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Ukraine Appears to Make a Small Gain in the South as Counteroffensive Continues - The New York Times