The line that Ukraine has drawn in the soil is Bakhmut. It is a strategically insignificant city, but tens of thousands of people have perished fighting over it. This combat, which began more than seven months ago, is the longest of the war thus far.
The men have spent months defending their fortifications against both regular Russian army forces and prisoners recruited by the Wagner private military group. According to the troops, Russian casualties vastly outnumber their own, but the enemy is employing new tactics to seize the city and surrounding countryside.
The Ukrainian forces are outgunned and outnumbered, but the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade’s anti-tank detachment is located on a chalk hillside to the south. As their name implies, 3Storm is unyielding. They have excavated deep trenches into the earth. As Russian artillery strikes in the near distance, the roof supports tremble, and field mice scamper along duckboards. An antiquated field telephone rests in a wooden recess; their grandfathers would recognize these conditions.
“They can’t get to us, we can see a kilometer in every direction,” a grizzled 26-year-old soldier with the call sign “Dwarf,” says, indicating Russian positions. He states, “We can attack the enemy with everything we have.”
Neither the Russian nor Ukrainian armies disclose official casualty figures for Bakhmut or anywhere else, but the city has become a slaughterhouse.
In a week of combat for the city, Dwarf’s company encountered Russian Wagner group conscripts. “We fought every two hours,” he states. I estimate that a single company eliminated 50 employees per day. In the event of any uncertainty, he notes that these figures were confirmed by aerial reconnaissance. “The [Russian vehicle] arrives, fifty bodies emerge, a day passes, and fifty bodies emerge once more,” he says. According to him, his company lost a fraction of that number.
Officially, Ukraine estimates that Russia loses seven soldiers for every Ukrainian soldier slain. Russia announced earlier this week that it had slain over 220 Ukrainian soldiers in a single day during the battle for Bakhmut. These statistics cannot be independently confirmed.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, two captured Wagner conscripts stated that their training before deployment consists primarily of learning to crawl through the dark forests. If they endure their six months of service at the front, they are released.
Conditions have begun to alter along the entire 600-mile-long eastern front. Compared to the neighboring territory, 3Storm’s hideout atop a chalky hilltop feels parched.
An early spring has softened the winter’s frozen ground, which may benefit the defenders. To get there, we had to follow the Ukrainian soldiers on foot; within a few meters, the thick mud clogged my boots. A battlefield ambulance passes unsteadily, its caterpillar tracks plowing up the ground and spewing mud pools as it struggles to maintain traction.
The surrounding villages, whose locations cannot be disclosed, are in ruins. “People Live Here” is handwritten on gates, mostly in Russian, as an appeal as well as a statement. The only inhabitants of the streets are stray dogs roaming the ruins of destroyed farms and residences.
To encircle Bakhmut, Russian forces have methodically advanced for the past two months. General Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of Ukrainian ground forces, says his forces will continue to resist. “Every day of resolute resistance buys us valuable time to reduce the enemy’s offensive capabilities,” he says as he sends in additional reinforcements. However, not only Russians have fallen victim to the Bakhmut snare. Increasing numbers of Ukrainians are also dying in this region.
On the hillside, a group of soldiers has established a gun position, and I ask Dwarf, given that Ukraine is losing soldiers to untrained Russian convicts, whether it makes sense to defend a city that is surrounded by the enemy.
He says, “I was pondering, myself if we should keep defending Bakhmut. On the one hand, the current situation is terrible. No words can adequately convey it. The alternative is to abandon Bakhmut and relocate to a new settlement. What distinction is there between defending Bakhmut and any other village?”
His colleague, a robust man with a full, dark beard whose call sign is Holm, concurs. “This is not a geopolitical issue for us. We are merely common soldiers. However, this is our property. Then, we may retreat to Chasiv Yar, from there to Slovyansk, and finally to Kyiv. Let it take one, two, four, or five years, but we must fight for every inch of our land.”
The soldiers have been engaged in combat for over a year, and they claim that the Russians are evolving.
“They are gaining knowledge and becoming more intelligent, which truly terrifies me,” says Dwarf. “They dispatch a group of five idiots from prison. After being shot, the enemy moves around and encircles you from behind.”
Holm adds that Russia is now employing grenade-armed drones more effectively. “We used to drop them and terrify them,” he explains. They are now raining grenades from drones on our positions.
Before the conflict, Dwarf was an outdoor youth worker who took children hiking in the Carpathian Mountains on the western border of the country. On the eastern front of Ukraine, this is a distant memory. Since then, he has fought in numerous conflicts, but the horror of Bakhmut is what now haunts him.
When I inquire about Wagner’s convict army, he pauses and says, “I’ll be straightforward. It’s brilliant. Cruel and immoral but effective methods. It turned out well. And it continues to function in Bakhmut.”
Russian casualties rise in the Battle of Bakhmut, but strategies evolve.
The 28th Brigade was assaulted by Russian infantry and tanks two nights prior. In a timbered gun position below ground, frigid rain drips through the roof onto the dirt floor, and a Maxim belt-fed machine gun with sturdy iron wheels peers out into the barren landscape.
“It only works when there is a massive attack,” says Borys. “Then it works.” “So we use it every week”.
As winter gives way to spring in 21st-century Europe, this is how the battle for Bakhmut is being waged. A weapon from the 19th century is still used to slaughter dozens of men on black Ukrainian soil.
