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- Ukrainian troops are trying to hold out on the east bank of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine.
- But Russian troops outnumber them 4 to 1, a Ukrainian soldier told the Financial Times.
- Vanya said the "situation is deplorable" and that Ukraine was suffering heavy casualties.
Russian troops have a significant advantage over Ukraine when it comes to manpower on the Dnipro River, a Ukrainian soldier said.
Vanya, a soldier in a reconnaissance unit fighting with marines on the east bank of the river, told the Financial Times that for every one of them, there were at least four Russians.
He also said that Ukrainian forces were suffering heavy casualties, though he declined to give specific numbers.
Vanya said the "situation is deplorable."
The Dnipro River has become a focal point of the war in Ukraine in recent months, with Ukrainian officials claiming that their forces have established a foothold on the eastern bank.
To hold the left bank of the river, Ukrainian forces have been using first-person view drones loaded with munitions to strike Russian vehicles, the UK Ministry of Defence said last week.
According to one Russian military blogger quoted by the UK MOD, Ukrainians have destroyed almost 90% of Russian military hardware in one village located on the east bank of the river.
But Ukrainian forces are also struggling.
The FT reported that Vanya's unit is positioned on marshy terrain and in shallow trenches that are prone to flooding or filled with rotting Russian corpses.
And their efforts to hold out on the east bank are also complicated by how difficult it is to carry heavy weapons across.
"Everything we take is what we can carry ourselves," Vanya told the newspaper, adding: "In a very rare case, I saw one heavy machine gun brought across."
Other Ukrainian soldiers have also reported struggling to make advances on the left bank of the river.
"It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It's impossible to move equipment there," Ukrainian soldier Oleksiy told The New York Times in December.
A Ukrainian soldier, identified only as Dmytro, said that he felt "tossed like a piece of meat to the wolves" when ordered to bridge the river and hold ground on the east bank.
Meanwhile, an unnamed soldier told the BBC that some of the marines sent to help defend recent Ukrainian advances on the Dnipro "can't even swim."
Ukrainian and Russian forces have maintained their "positional engagements" on the east bank of the river, the Institute for the Study of War said on Thursday.
It added, citing Russian military bloggers, that a detachment of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade achieved a "partial" advance into Krynky, but Ukrainian forces continue to "firmly" hold positions within the settlement.