Wrapped in her yellow cloak, Irina feeds the fire where she prepares food in the middle of the street. “Today we are lucky. I’m going to make goulash,’ he says bitterly. “I only have a piece of meat and a few vegetables, but a lot of spices,” he jokes. The smoke from the wood he uses to light the fire mingles with that from the constant explosions that bathe Bakhmut in a brown haze like a small desert storm. “The Russians are particularly upset today,” replies Irina, 58. Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, once famous for its salt mines and nearby sparkling wines, and even tours by wine-tasting enthusiasts, is now the hottest spot in town. in Ukraine. The city is leading the way.
Russian shelling is heard nearby, enraged, and a group of soldiers hurries to change position. Two Ukrainian armored cars drive at full speed on a bumpy road in the city center. Twenty-four hours earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was at some Ukrainian army outposts around this town in Donbass, the eastern area partly controlled by Russian forces. And the Kremlin’s response to the Ukrainian leader’s boldest visit on the 300th day of the invasion unleashed a relentless concert of mortar shells, Grad rockets, Huracán and artillery fire.
Bajmut’s neighbors warmed up at their front door last Wednesday. Maria Sahuquillo
Bakhmut is, Selenskyj said, a “hell”. The fierce defense of the city by the Ukrainian army has become yet another symbol of the country’s resistance and strength, where the motto “Baymut resistance” is already mythical: “The East resists because Bakhmut fights. This is the strength of our morale. In fierce battles and at the cost of many lives, freedom is defended here for all of us,” the Ukrainian president said.
The craters left by the missiles and constant artillery fire mix with the mud and snowflakes that begin to fall, creating a gray and dirty carpet. There is hardly a building left without the scars of a 10-month war with no prospect of an imminent end. Of the 70,000 to 80,000 people who lived in Bakhmut before the major invasion, only about 7,000 remain, according to local authorities. Maybe even less. Most live in basements and makeshift shelters, where they live in appalling conditions and depend on humanitarian aid, which is brought to the city by a few experienced volunteers. A city that was still bustling in May and is now full of trenches and huge anti-tank traps.
At one of the intersections lies the corpse of a man, partially covered by a cloth that someone has placed over him. It has been in the same place for several days. No one has come to pick him up yet. Two women run across the intersection on their way to fill three jugs of water which they carry on a cart. You don’t stop to look. There isn’t a single car and it’s not pleasant to be around for even a minute, one of them shouts, wearing a woolen hat pulled over his ears and a fur coat. The coat’s luxurious – still shiny – black hair contrasts with the landscape in the background, a city in ruins without electricity, water, gas, heating or telephone for months.
After capturing the cities of Severodonetsk and Lisichansk in the Lugansk region in June and July and Russia’s greatest victories in the Donbass, Kremlin forces began a brutal siege of Bakhmut, which had become the military center of the entire region , with a large hospital where the wounded came from different points of the front. The strategy with Bakhmut is the same as Putin used in Lugansk, in Chechen Grozny in the 1990s, in Aleppo in Syria between 2015 and 2016, and identical to the strategy he used in the port city of Mariupol: besiege, bomb and kill to resist is broken broken. Although the conquest consists only of burnt foundations. Of ruins.
Maxim, an experienced shooter in a balaclava, peers through modern binoculars. Besides the constant crackle of shelling, which incessantly shakes the ground, and finally the flight of fighters, the firing of small arms can be heard not far away. Street fighting is already taking place in the east side of the city.
Russia began launching tactical groups and battalions in support of airstrikes to encircle Bakhmut. For several weeks, it has changed its formula and sends attack teams with offensive tactics, said Serhii Cherevaty, spokesman for the Ukrainian Army Group East. Initially the squadrons consisted of about 50 men. There are now about 15. Some are new recruits, whom Putin mobilized in October, poorly trained and ill-equipped, according to Ukrainian military reports. But many of those squads, British intelligence says, are mercenaries from the Wagner Military Company led by the shadowy Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as Putin’s chef for his catering business and proximity to the Kremlin, which has released tens of thousands of prisoners from Russian prisons. has recruited. sent to Ukraine for the Battle of Bakhmut.
“The Russians don’t respect their men,” says Private Maxim. “They are sent here to die like cockroaches, they don’t even get their bodies back. If we neutralize one group, they send another. And so on and on. And one more,” the uniform adds with a bitter gesture. He guarantees that many of them arrive drugged. So much so, he says, that they don’t even feel the tension of battle. Neither does the pain.
Bakhmut was called Artemivsk until 2016 by the Bolshevik revolutionary Fyodor Artem Sergeyev, who was close to Stalin, and had some interest in one of the battles of the 2014 war, in which the Kremlin ducked behind the pro-Russian separatists, who eventually became the take over direction. of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which Russia has now illegally taken over and annexed, and is no longer hiding behind the separatist leadership it has built in the region. On the map, Bakhmut has no excessive geostrategic value in the Kremlin’s all-out war in Ukraine, although it is a logistical point for the Ukrainian military and losing it would complicate things in continuing to send Russian troops and supplies to various points in the world push for gift. 🇧🇷
With its conquest, Russia could break through that core, but more importantly, it would win a small symbolic and psychological victory at a time when the Kremlin’s misfortunes are piling up. In an unusual way, Putin has admitted that the war – which he continues to describe as a “special military operation” – is becoming increasingly complicated and has ordered unlimited resources for the military. “They are suffering disproportionate losses for an army fighting the war of the 21st century,” said Serhii Cherevaty. Indeed, some analysts have likened the bloody Battle of Bakhmut to the trench warfare of World War I.
A Ukrainian soldier sits in a tank about 4 km from the Bakhmut front on Wednesday, guarding the road. Maria Sahuquillo
The losses among Kremlin forces are huge, the Ukrainian government says. And many Russian military corps still lie in the snow and mud on the battlefield. But Ukraine also suffered heavy losses in the battle for the Bakhmut fortress, as Zelenskyy admits. Another reason to visit the city, conveniently planned for the trip to the United States, where he called for more military and economic aid to keep the country afloat and continue the resistance.
Brown-colored military ambulances come out like a trickle. Outside the city limits, others are waiting to collect the injured and take them to safer areas. Russia also bombed the hospital and the doctors had to move elsewhere. The firefighters, who are held in a barracks in central Bakhmut, do not come out when there are heavy attacks; the Kremlin often strikes twice in the same place. Inside the barracks, the walls shook from the explosions and shrapnel hit the clogged glass of one of the windows.
On a bench painted blue, in front of the flower beds that were once full of flowers, Liudmila laments between explosions. “I am 80 years old, I have seen everything and it is unbearable. We just want it to stop,” she says with tears in her eyes. What happens to the city doesn’t even interest him anymore. There are more like them, shocked citizens running as if on autopilot or looking at the horizon. Others, says Private Maxim with a shrug, wait in a devastated city for the arrival of Russian troops.
Katja and Kristina, Irina’s daughters, went out on the porch of their house to get some fresh air. The whole family, including Katja’s nine-year-old son, lives in the basement of a building riddled with cracks, broken glass and what appears to be covered in cement stains. “He knows? Life before the war wasn’t great either, but this is our home after all,” Katja remarks with a shrug. The young woman, with perfectly braided hair and despite the low temperatures, without a coat, worked as a clerk in a “The women in this area are strong and resilient. So believe me, they will not break us,” he emphasizes.
Source: La Neta Neta
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
