The two old friends worked as truck drivers before picking up assault rifles. Their commander was an office manager.

None of them expected to be sitting in a ditch near a exposed road leading to Russian-held Kherson – the new target of Ukraine’s months-long counteroffensive.

All three would be reluctant to admit that the next phase of a war that poses the greatest threat to global security in generations depended on the fighting spirit of men like them.

And everyone would like to go home.

“Conditions here aren’t great,” said the truck driver-turned-grunt soldier calling himself “Uncle” after landing on the front lines of the Battle of Kherson.

“We go up this street under fire and come down this street under fire,” the 51-year-old grumbled with a mischievous wink.

The withered sunflower fields around him offered no hiding place from the Russian bombs and missiles that the men expected to fall any minute.

They had just fired their own artillery pieces and braced themselves for the almost inevitable reaction.

His younger friend Znakhar took one look at his dirty boots and resorted to the gallows humor befitting such situations.

“At least we have bigger trenches here. The ones we’re digging there are individual-sized holes in the ground,” he said, nodding toward the fighting raging a few fields closer to Kherson.

“We call them our personal graves.”

A 40-kilometer road running from government-held Mykolaiv to Russian-held Kherson will form the backbone of Ukraine’s efforts to regain access to the Sea of ??Azov and sever Russia’s land connection with Crimea.

The Ukrainians advanced on the only regional capital that the Russians managed to capture throughout the war from two directions.

The much longer route leads down from the steel town of Kryvyi Rig and through a network of villages – most still under Russian control.

The shortcut leads directly to Kherson via the M14 motorway.

The campaign was spearheaded by elite units and backed by a ragtag army of volunteers who shuttled up and down the dual carriageway with little protection from Russian drones and fighter jets.

Many curse and scold along the way.

The commander of the truckers is a slight and learned man who worked in an office and had no combat experience before the Russian invasion.

His eyes water with emotion as he recalls the overwhelming support his unit receives from the few Ukrainians who have still not fled the devastation.

“They give us fruit, veg – it’s not like we need all that stuff,” Commander Mykhailo said with a shy smile.

“It’s nice. It’s nice to think that your neighbors, friends, their children, they all have your back,” said the 41-year-old.

“Everyone wants to help where they can.”

But his face hardens as he begins to list all the weapons Ukraine still needs to oust the Russians for good.

“It’s very difficult to fight tanks with automatic rifles,” he said.

Mykhailo ran out of fingers counting the weapons his units needed to fight without exposing themselves to return fire – a frustration that has persisted since the early days of the war.

Washington’s decision in late May to begin supplying long-range missiles changed the war’s counterattacks and allowed the Ukrainians to launch their counteroffensive in the north.

But the retreating Russians used most of their remaining strength to hold Kherson.

A loss there would leave little more for Russian President Vladimir Putin than the blood-soaked ruins of Mariupol and the eastern lands his proxies seized in 2014.

Commander-in-Chief Andre – a veteran of the simmering conflict Ukraine had been going through before Putin’s all-out invasion – appeared to relish his troops’ underdog status.

He strode down a field littered with the charred remains of a Russian battalion that tried to capture Mykolaiv in the first 10 days of the war.

It reached its edge before being wiped out by Ukrainian volunteers firing at the Russians from the surrounding rooftops.

“They are still completing their Soviet military training,” said the 50-year-old soldier.

“Actually, their textbooks must be from the First World War,” he scoffed. “Otherwise you can’t understand how they fight.”