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00:00 Ukrainian officials accuse Russia of specifically targeting rescue workers and emergency crews
00:05 with two deadly missile strikes on a small eastern town.
00:10 At least seven people were killed and more than 80 others wounded in Monday's attacks
00:14 on Pokrovsk.
00:16 Kiev's counter-offensive meantime is slowly inching forward, but the human toll is high
00:21 on both sides.
00:22 CNN has obtained extraordinary footage showing the challenges faced by those tasked with
00:27 retrieving fallen troops.
00:29 And I want to warn you that this report does contain some very graphic video, including
00:34 human remains.
00:36 Nick Payne-Walsh has more.
00:40 Even saving the dead can be lethal work.
00:44 It is dawn in freshly overrun Russian positions on the southern front, where the assault is
00:52 on trench networks spread out in the open.
00:56 This is rare footage letting us see the point of view of a Ukrainian soldier and body collector
01:01 Vyacheslav.
01:04 His unit tasked with bringing back the fallen, their own but also Russian dead too.
01:11 This Ukrainian body seeming to have almost melted into the ground, the heat speeding
01:16 up decay, another factor in this grim, gruelling work, where they are often guided to their
01:22 targets by the smell, from which the masks aren't protection enough.
01:47 Russian drones see them and they watch them back.
01:52 Anti-drone rifles a modern twist in trench warfare from the last century.
02:02 It is exhausting work.
02:04 While troops here focus on survival and taking cover, Vyacheslav and his team must carry
02:10 these heavy but vital burdens all the way back to the road, where they can then bring
02:16 closure to the grieving, the chance of burial and a goodbye.
02:22 A week earlier in another part of the trenches where the fight has clearly been ferocious,
02:27 they pass western supplied armour that has been torn apart.
02:37 Nothing remains found but the shelling is constant.
02:52 The search however in these captured Russian positions is cautious, probing each spot for
02:57 minds.
03:06 With the men holding the position day and night, the body collectors are welcome relief,
03:13 taking away the reminders of how close death is.
03:22 The Russians still looking for targets here, among the men rescuing Russian corpses.
03:30 It is the work nobody ever wanted to do, out, exposed in the open, as Ukraine prays for
03:49 a breakthrough.
03:52 Now we finally see Vyacheslav's face in the moment when they know they've survived another
03:59 day.
04:00 The relief they feel here, nothing compared to the families who may feel some less agony
04:09 and closure from the cargo they return home.
04:13 Nick Payton-Walsh, CNN, Zaporizhia, Ukraine.
04:16 As we receive these sobering assessments about the state of the Ukrainian counter offensive,
04:19 I want to speak now with retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, who's been covering
04:23 and providing analysis on this war since the very beginning.
04:27 General Hertling, good to have you this afternoon.
04:30 You and I've had extensive conversations about assessments from the battlefield.
04:35 What is your assessment right now?
04:37 Ukrainian forces have not advanced as much as they or the West hoped.
04:42 Does that mean they can't or won't?
04:46 Absolutely not, Jim.
04:47 I liked your opening commentary, because what you said is many analysts believed Ukraine
04:53 could not stop Russia at the beginning of this war, when they were on the defensive
04:58 and Russia was on the offensive.
05:00 Now the tide has turned, the mission set has switched.
05:04 And what the Ukrainians are now doing is attempting multiple deliberate attacks on a much larger
05:10 scale with all the brigades they have as part of a large offensive operation.
05:16 They're doing it with multiple combat units, estimates say, unsourced estimates say between
05:21 nine and 12 combat arms brigade over a very large area, between 400 and 600 miles, or
05:29 conservatively the distance between Washington, D.C. and Boston, against an enemy who had
05:34 eight months to build three extensive belts, which you outlined early on.
05:39 This is a tough mission.
05:41 I was one of those that countered the analyst view at the beginning, saying that Ukraine
05:46 could hold up against the Russians.
05:48 I'm also one right now that's saying, yeah, there's a lot of dour commentary about what's
05:52 going on right now, but what Ukraine is attempting to do is the toughest of all missions, and
05:58 it's going to take a long time.
06:00 Understood.
06:01 And to your point, you're absolutely right.
06:04 There were times earlier in this war when the Ukrainians were counted out.
06:07 But this is a fundamentally different battle than it was, for instance, around Kiev, around
06:12 Kiev defended by small, mobile Ukrainian units, mobile weapons systems like the Javelin.
06:18 This is a grinding war on flat land in the east, as you note, highly defended.
06:24 Is it just a matter of time, in your view, that you believe these Ukrainian units can
06:28 break through, or is there a missing piece?
06:31 Is there a tactical change?
06:32 Is there a weapons change that's necessary?
06:36 No, I think a lot of people will say we've got to give them more, and that's certainly
06:41 true in terms of what the West and especially the United States is providing.
06:46 But what you're talking about, Jim, is the Ukrainian army is changing their way of war.
06:51 They still have a lot of post-Soviet biases from their time working part of the Russian
06:58 military, so they have to break that.
07:00 The Russian way of war is a lot of artillery strikes, constant artillery, as we've seen
07:05 the Russians do in this campaign.
07:07 What we're attempting to help the Ukrainians with now is undertake that transformation
07:12 of using forces in a different way.
07:16 It's going to be hard.
07:17 And unfortunately, Jim, truthfully, I'm going to go back to what I said earlier, what the
07:21 mission they are attempting is the toughest one of all.
07:25 I've trained on this kind of mission as a tank brigade commander, and what I've got
07:30 to tell you is I failed miserably multiple times in training operations.
07:35 I can't imagine when you're talking about real bullets and real enemies and real casualties
07:40 how tough it is for Ukraine to do what they're doing.
07:42 You said earlier they're pulling forces back.
07:45 Some of the commanders are saying, let's stop this mission.
07:48 At our national training center, we could call end of mission and then give an AAR,
07:52 an after-action review of what people did wrong.
07:55 In combat, unfortunately, you can't do the same thing.
07:59 There's been a lot of common analysis when I speak to folks both in Europe and here about
08:05 the lack of air cover, air support that those Ukrainian units have, Russia maintaining an
08:10 advantage there in terms of attacking them, and Ukrainian units basically operating on
08:16 the ground often without air cover.
08:18 Would that be, could that be, because as you know, there's been a lot of debate about F-16s,
08:22 for instance, could that addition make a significant difference there?
08:28 Yeah, Jim, I'm going to go out on a ledge right here and say probably not right now.
08:36 Eventually, the Ukrainian military can build a combined arms joint force with air coordinating
08:43 with the ground.
08:44 But what we've seen even in the ground campaign is Ukraine has accepted a bunch of equipment.
08:51 They had relatively few weeks to train on that equipment.
08:55 They've tried to put it together.
08:57 Now we're talking about air-ground coordination.
09:00 That's a whole different ballgame and is PhD-level warfare, to be honest with you.
09:06 Would a modern air force applied in this situation help?
09:11 Yes, it certainly would.
09:13 But unfortunately, that also takes time, not just to train pilots, and that's been the
09:18 issue.
09:19 You know, it only takes a couple of months to train a pilot.
09:21 Yeah, but it takes a whole lot longer to get the interaction between the ground, the air,
09:26 the support, and the ability to hit targets either in the air or on the ground through
09:31 things like joint tactical air controllers and how you force.
09:35 You know, Russia does not have air superiority right now.
09:38 That's a mistake most people believe.
09:40 They are not going forward of the Russian front lines because they're afraid of Ukrainian
09:45 air defense.
09:47 Ukraine would probably have the same situation because Russian's air defense and their electronic
09:52 warfare is very, very good.
09:54 Yeah, yeah, both sides reluctant to put too many aircraft up in the air.
09:58 General Hertling, I know we're going to keep talking about this.
10:00 Thanks so much for joining us today.
10:02 My pleasure, Jim.