Bakhmut defends himself, the longest battle in the Ukraine conflict continues to demand what is perhaps the highest blood price of the war, not only from the Ukrainian defenders barricaded in the rubble, but above all from the Russians. Moscow’s soldiers are “razing” the city, “it’s a total ruin, they’re killing everyone they can find,” condemned the head of Ukraine’s military administration for the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, assuring that war crimes “are documented, they are held responsible for everything.
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Bachmut, the importance of the city
The city that Russians call Artyomovsk is not particularly strategic. The United States has already stressed that its eventual overthrow would have no significant impact on the war “and certainly will not stop the Ukrainians or slow them down in their attempt to retake their territory.” But it has become another furious symbolic struggle, for Kyiv a bastion of resistance, for Moscow an unyielding fortress. “It is surrounded on three sides, fighting for control of the highway and to cut off the only Ukrainian supply route into the city,” a pro-Russian military adviser to the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic revealed after leader Denis Pushilin spoke on Monday impending fall. “When it’s conquered, we’ll let you know, at the moment it’s not surrounded yet,” dampened the mood Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner, protagonist of the conquest of nearby Soledar and now also in the front row in the Battle of Bakhmut .
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Wagner losses
By some estimates, von Wagner’s would have lost 4,000 units, the wounded would be over 10,000. Impressive numbers considering Wagner is a private group. Many witnesses and sources reported that the strategy adopted would have been to send in the Russian army recruits to wear down Ukraine’s defenses, and then to call in the mercenary veterans, who have earned a bitter reputation in the Middle East, in Africa. On the other hand, Ukrainian soldiers hold the once-80,000-population town that was the target of thousands of tourists, fascinated by the 19th-century buildings now reduced to rubble by bombing raids.
“It’s hell on earth, I can’t find the words to describe it,” is the image sent back by a Ukrainian soldier on the battlefield. He has been in the trenches for six months since the Russian offensive to take the city began in August. Ruins everywhere. The few thousand inhabitants are forced to live in the dark, in cellars, where time is marked by explosions and the noise of artillery, the soundtrack of this relentless struggle. Two civilians have been killed by shelling in the past 24 hours. Kyiv does not provide casualty figures, but it is estimated that several dozen wounded Ukrainians are transported to the rear every day. Elements of the Azov Battalion were also to arrive on the front line. Bakhmut is “invincible” and “will never fall,” the Ukrainians promise their people.