NEW YORK, March 7. /TASS/. The Ukrainian armed forces are trying to build a defense line similar to the fortification system created by the Russian military more than a year ago, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The newspaper said that during an attempted counteroffensive in 2023, the Ukrainian army "quickly became bogged down in an elaborate network of obstacles" of Russian forces, which "proved almost impossible to traverse." The Russian defense consisted of multilayered trench lines, antitank ditches, concrete blocks and extensive minefields, the newspaper said. Now the Ukrainian military is "attempting to replicate the physical obstacles that Russia created on its side of the front more than a year ago." According to The Wall Street Journal, west of Avdeyevka, excavators are carving up the earth to create antitank ditches and trenches.

So far, the campaign to build a wide network of fortifications, especially around Avdeyevka, "hasn’t yielded significant results," according to Western officials and Ukrainian servicemen the newspaper spoke to. "In the circumstances we’re in, we have to dig, entrench and build by ourselves," Maksym Zhorin, deputy commander of Ukraine’s 3rd assault brigade, told the newspaper.

According to military expert Franz-Stefan Gady, who recently visited the frontline areas, the Ukrainian armed forces failed to create a system of echeloned defense. "The situation will get quite critical for the Ukrainian forces," the expert opined.

In December 2023, Ukrainian lawmaker Alexandra Ustinova said that due to problems with receiving aid from Western countries, Kiev would have to turn to defense, which is why Ukraine is building three lines of fortifications. On January 19, 2024, the Ukrainian government decided to allocate record funds for the construction of the defensive lines: about 466 million dollars.