KYIV — In Donbas, mere miles from the heart of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, you can actually find a laugh.

“There’s this joke that before the Russian invasion Feb. 24, 2022, Russia’s army was considered by some to be the second-best army in the world,” Oleg Shiryaev, commander of the 225th separate assault battalion, told me through a translator. “After the invasion, it became apparent that it’s the second-best army in Ukraine. After the Prigozhin coup, it’s the second-best army in Russia.”

Everyone in the room chuckles.

But of course Ukraine’s fight for survival is no joke. A

nd the world is watching to see how the country uses Western aid in its attempt to push a better-resourced, bigger-manned force out of its territory.

“We went into this counteroffensive with very heightened expectations from not just our Western partners but from even the Ukrainian people because we all still remember how successful was our counteroffensive in Kharkiv,” Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the defense minister, said Sunday over the sound of air-raid sirens.

But “the military and political command had no illusions,” knowing it’s “not going to be the same way it was in Kharkiv and Kherson,” he noted. “The Russians have built unprecedentedly fortified defense lines along the front lines everywhere in the east, in the south. So we knew that there were millions of mines, that there were hundreds of kilometers of trenches.”

In other words, the counterattack remains in the early stages.

“It’s been a month and a half of offensive operations by now, but it is still largely probing and shaping operations. Now, that means that we have not yet committed our major forces — we are still looking for vulnerabilities in the enemy’s defense lines.”

Mercenaries’ terrain

Shiryaev, based near Bahkmut, the city Russians took in May and all but destroyed, is familiar with Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries — and others. “This is the sector where they have private military companies,” he explained. But since the attempted “coup,” “I haven’t noticed any changes whatsoever.”

“The Ukrainian forces are moving forward little by little — not drastically, but there is movement,” he said. “We’re using the resources we have on hand right now, and we’re re managing to do it fairly well.”

Or, as Konstantyn Sergeevich Zhydkov, Lt. Col. commander of the 228th battalion, more bluntly put it through a translator: “The enemy is standing in front of us, we shoot at him, they shoot at us.”

Zhydkov, who’s fighting near Bakhmut, elaborated, “Basically, these are artillery duels. Now there are few shooting battles — artillery is more involved.”

The heavy weapons like tanks Ukraine practically had to beg for, in other words.

He disputes a New York Times report that in the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, 20% of the equipment sent to the front lines was damaged or destroyed.

The operation, Zhydkov said, “is going slowly because we are concerned with the lives of our fighters and we are doing everything very carefully and correctly. It is very important to win, but it is equally important to save the lives of the fighters so that the fighters can continue to do their job and return alive.”

“We never use our soldiers as cannon fodder in pursuit of some quick successes,” Sak confirmed.

“The military planning takes into account all the factors, everything from the weather conditions to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the defense lines of the enemy. But the priority is always achieving maximum results with minimum losses for the Ukrainian army.

Pressing for F-16s

What really “determines the pace of the offensive operations,” he said, “is the complete air dominance of Russians along the front lines. This is why we’ve been asking for F-16s for almost a year now. But the fact we don’t have anything to counter the Russian air dominance means we have to be extra careful, and because we value the life of our soldiers, it’s taking much longer.”

Indeed, almost no country on earth would even consider “offensive operations” without “air dominance.”

“Just look back at how the Desert Storm shock-and-awe campaign was carried out in the first couple hours,” he said. “All Iraqi air-defense systems had been obliterated before the ground forces actually moved in.”

“Considering we don’t have fighter jets and considering the Russians have air dominance,” he added, “this offensive is going really well because we are liberating our land.”

US-provided cluster munitions have been “deployed to the front lines, but we haven’t used them yet” — and while he knows about “moral concerns” around their use, Ukraine will use them “only to defeat the enemy” and “break through the defense lines.”

He expects they’ll be a big help.

Sak warned, however, “we must also not underestimate our enemy. We always say that the Russians are demoralized, disorganized, poorly equipped, poorly trained” — but they’re “learning as well.”

Ukraine, he admitted, “no longer” has “complete dominance in the drone warfare” of the invasion’s early days.

The lesson for the West: “The enemy is weaponizing time. The more time we give them, the smarter they will become, and the more difficult it will become for the Ukrainian army to liberate our land. This is why procrastination is very, very dangerous.”

He immediately pointed to how training for F-16 pilots is “being slowed down unnecessarily by some bureaucracy in different countries, including the US.” By “the time F-16s will come,” Russians will be prepared.

Kelly Jane Torrance is The Post’s op-ed editor.