WaPo headline: ‘Look, these are our boys’: Ukrainian troops drive Russian tanks on new front line
By Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk
September 17, 2022 at 4:28 p.m. EDT
KUPIANSK, Ukraine – The front line is now a river, the Oskil, that runs through the middle of the eastern Ukrainian town of Kupiansk. On one side are the charging Ukrainian forces who have pushed their Russian enemies almost entirely out of the northeastern Kharkiv region during a sweeping counteroffensive this month.
From her bedroom window, Liza Udovik, 26, has a view of the other side, to where the Russians have retreated. The sound of outgoing fire from the Ukrainians rocked her apartment these past few days, when the Ukrainian military moved into Kupiansk and the town became a battleground. Russian tanks and armored vehicles still patrol the streets, but it’s the Ukrainians driving them, using the Russians’ own abandoned weapons against them.
Udovik started counting the seconds between hearing the deafening boom of artillery launched and the appearance of smoke in the distance. From just Tuesday to Wednesday, the gap got longer, stretching from 9 seconds to 13.
“They’re getting pushed back,” she said with a smile.