On the frontline The Ukrainians paying price as Russia advances

The Russian plane flew above Avdiivka, the city abandoned this month by Ukrainian forces.

- Luke Harding

It looped T above the new eastern frontline. And then it dropped a bomb, not far from where Maryna Haivoronska was standing, in the village of Novoselivka Persha. "I saw the jet in the sky," she said. "It was 9.30am. The bomb landed 500 metres away from me. I threw myself to the ground. My legs are still trembling."

Since capturing Avdiivka, Russian forces have been moving rapidly forward. Earlier this week they overran two settlements down the road from Novoselivka, where Haivoronska is the mayor. Their tactics are brutally effective. First, fighter jets carpet-bomb the area. Then, assault groups in armoured vehicles overwhelm Ukraine's new and vulnerable positions.

Two years after the full-scale invasion, Russia is close to achieving a strategic breakthrough in the east. It is happening in a rustic landscape of brownfields, wispy yellow feather grass and pyramid-like slag heaps. Ukrainian forces clatter up and down in green Humvees along dusty country roads. But they have no answer to Russian planes, which patrol above them in an azure haze, leaving decorative curlicue trails.

Ukrainian troops have not given up. They have shot down 10 enemy Sukhoi jets in as many days. But they lack tactical-level air defences, which would allow them to chase away Russia's marauding squadrons. The Ukrainians have little artillery. The Russians have lots. The sound of incoming Grad missiles can be heard every few minutes along the Ukrainian frontline: a terrible thunderclap.

The heavy glide bomb that fell on Novoselivka's School Street wrecked a two-storey house. Miraculously, the family inside - Alyona Movchan and her two children - survived. The village has been hit before. In 2023 a rocket flattened the main square, destroying everything apart from a garish Soviet war memorial with a silver-painted sculpture of a wounded soldier. Three people died, one from a heart attack.