A Ukrainian marine runs through the apartment blocks in the frontline town of Vuhledar, Ukraine, on Saturday, February 25, 2023 to take a stand. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
VUHLEDAR, Ukraine (AP) —
The murky water is slowly seeping out of the filthy drainpipe into her filthy container – the ticking seconds increasing the risk that Emilia Budskaya could lose life or limb to Russian artillery bombardments plaguing her frontline town in eastern Ukraine.
Gaping shrapnel cracks in the courtyard walls around them bear witness to the dangers of venturing outside – unprotected and without the body armor worn by Ukrainian soldiers defending Vuhledar as they emerge from their bunkers.
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But Budskaya and her daughter need water to hold on and survive to face another day in the ruins.
And so they wait—tick, tick, tick—for the container to fill, for Budskaya to then fill the water into plastic bottles, and—tick, tick, tick—for her to then start the process all over again until her bottles are filled.
A residential building destroyed by Russian forces is seen through the broken window on Saturday February 25, 2023 in the frontline town of Vuhledar, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Picking their way through the debris and mud, they carry their loot back to the dark basement that now serves as their home.
“We have no water, nothing,” says Budskaya. “I fetch rainwater to wash dishes and hands.”
On the largely static frontline between Ukrainian and Russian forces, stretching hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the Black Sea in the south to Ukraine’s northeastern border with Russia, Vuhledar has become one of the deadliest flashpoints.
Alongside Bakhmut, Marinka and other cities, particularly in hard-fought eastern Ukraine, it is seen as evidence of a bitter and destructive war of attrition, as well as a symbol of bitter Ukrainian resistance.
By defending their ruins, Ukrainian forces are slowing costly Russian offensive efforts to expand Moscow’s control over the entire industrial Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. It became Russian President Vladimir Putin’s revised target of conquest after his forces were repulsed from the capital Kiev and northern Ukraine in the opening phase of the invasion a year ago.
Ukrainian soldiers are also paying a heavy price, but say their casualties are wearing down waves of troops and equipment that Moscow is throwing into battle.
Ukrainian marines sit in an APC before heading to the front line in the city of Vuhledar, Ukraine, on Saturday, February 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
In Bakhmut, a soldier, identified only by his warname “expert,” said the pulverized city in the Donetsk region of Donbass had become “a stronghold” of Ukraine.
“See what they did to him?” he said of the Russian forces who have been pounding Bakhmut for months, slowly moving forward with heavy casualties to capture a prize that, if it falls, could allow Moscow to to argue that the invasion is making progress.
“And this is not the only city,” added the soldier, who is fighting in a Ukrainian rapid-deployment unit. “I wish they would break their teeth chewing.”
Battlefields around Vuhledar, southwest of Bakhmut, and also in the Donetsk region bear witness to the valuable equipment and manpower that Russia expends with little territorial gain. Tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, blown up by mines or stopped by Ukrainian attacks, crowd the devastated, cratered compound.
Although Russia has captured most of the Luhansk region, which is also part of the Donbass, the adjacent Donetsk region remains roughly divided between Ukrainian and Russian control.
Ukraine’s military said Sunday Russian attacks in the east continue to focus on Bakhmut and other targets.
A Ukrainian Marine stands on the APC before taking position on Saturday, February 25, 2023 in the frontline town of Vuhledar, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
The Russian armed forces include mercenaries from the notorious Wagner Group, a private military company that has recruited fighters from prisons and thrown them into combat at high casualty rates. Its multimillionaire owner with long-standing ties to Putin, former convicted criminal Yevgeny Prigozhin, said Saturday his fighters had penetrated a settlement on the northern outskirts of Bakhmut. The Ukrainian military denied this claim, saying Russian forces were repelled.
Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko reported that three civilians were killed and four wounded in Russian attacks on Saturday. Vuhledar and its surroundings had also come under intense fire, he said. Further along the frontline, in the southern Kherson region, which is also split between Ukrainian and Russian control, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported that two civilians were killed and seven wounded in 78 Russian attacks on the region on Saturday.
Ukrainian soldiers patrolled the ruins of Vuhledar, rushing down muddy paths to take cover behind pockmarked walls. They said their fight was greater than control of the city.
“We are fighting for our children, for our compatriots, for our nation,” said a marine with the war name Moryak.
“Because I think what Russia is doing now is genocide against Ukraine. And Ukrainians have no choice but to win.”
In other developments Sunday:
— On the anniversary of Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed confidence that returning the peninsula to Ukrainian control would be part of an end to the war.
“This is our country. Our people. Our history. We will return the Ukrainian flag to every corner of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price reiterated Sunday that “the United States does not and never will recognize Russia’s alleged annexation of the peninsula. Crimea is Ukraine.”
Asked whether the United States would support a Ukrainian military effort to retake Crimea, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on CNN’s State of the Union: “What ultimately happened to Crimea in connection with this… War and a settlement of that war is something that the Ukrainians, with the support of the United States, must determine.”
Ukraine’s military said Sunday that Russian forces were building fortifications in Crimea to bolster its defenses and allegedly brought 150 Russian conscripts from Russia’s Chelyabinsk region near the Ural Mountains to carry out engineering work.
– Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Farhan bin Faisal visited Kiev to sign an agreement under which Riyadh will provide humanitarian aid and finance for the purchase of oil derivatives. “We hope this will help alleviate the suffering of the Ukrainian people during this humanitarian crisis,” he said of the $400 million deal.
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John Leicester in Kiev, Ukraine, and Elise Morton in London contributed to this report.
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