I still dream of Bachmut. I’m back in the city center, embedded in the Ukrainian special forces. Shells are falling all around me; They rumble like rolling thunder and explode in a chaos of smoke and jagged metal. Buildings crumble into the earth.
My friend, a commando with the callsign “Strangeman”, calls out to me in the midst of the carnage, but I can’t hear him. Then another grenade falls and everything disappears.
Bachmut is both a dream and a nightmare. It’s a fantasy. This eastern city, just 55 miles from Russian-held Donetsk, has no real strategic value, but Vladimir Putin’s forces have been attempting to capture it since July of last year, killing tens of thousands in the process.
The reason? So that this modern-day tsar can fulfill his promise to “liberate” the entire Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.
But it is also a dream: of Ukraine’s freedom – of the country’s continued refusal to bow to genocide and of its people’s desire to live in peace.
Ukrainian soldiers fire artillery at Russian positions near Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on November 20, 2022
Russian Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner mercenary group, broadcasts a tirade against Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu near Bakhmut in Ukraine May 4, 2023, accusing the military command of preventing its troops from getting ammunition and supplies
If Bakhmut was already hell when I was there earlier this year, now it has sunk to the bottom circle. A few days ago my phone buzzed and a video popped up showing the sky over the city choked with twinkling lights – it was oddly beautiful. “The shit uses white phosphorus,” read the accompanying message from a Ukrainian friend.
White phosphorus ignites on contact with air; it burns through almost everything.
On the video I could see office towers engulfed in flames. Its use, while not outlawed, is considered a war crime against civilians, and the Russians have apparently covered much of the city with it. To make matters worse, Moscow has signed the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which bans the use of incendiary weapons designed to catch fire in civilian areas. It no longer even pretends to abide by any rules, even those to which it is committed.
Shelling this once energetic city was merely the latest atrocity. And for me it sums up what happened in much of Ukraine.
Bakhmut was once known for its sparkling wine made in underground caves. Now the city glistens with Russian ordnance, while the few remaining civilians huddle in basements and soldiers seek shelter in underground bunkers.
Victories on the ground have been rare for the Russians since Moscow launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 24 last year.
With the southeastern city of Kherson now back in Ukrainian hands and the army preparing for a major counteroffensive, the Russians throw everything they have at Bakhmut.
My soldier friends know they can’t hold the city forever. But they are determined to continue to resist.
Ukrainian forces are believed to have recaptured an area of nine square kilometers (three sq miles) this week, marking their biggest push in months.
Late on Monday I managed to contact my friend “Ivan” who has been fighting there since the beginning of the year. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before,” he said as I heard the familiar sound of shells in the background.
“We’re fighting street to street now.” We lose a lot of men every day, but in return we kill a lot more of them.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted barbaric drone footage on Twitter, saying the phosphorus attack was aimed at “unoccupied areas of Bakhmut with incendiary ammunition.”
Smoke billows from a building in Bakhmut, the scene of the heaviest fighting with Russian troops in Donetsk region, Ukraine
David Patrikarakos saw the devastation and desolation in Bakhmut, Ukraine
“The more we keep the Russians here, the more we help our forces elsewhere.” Maybe now they’re starting to reclaim some of our territory from these idiots; Every day we weaken them here. Even if they did eventually take the city, it would have cost them tens of thousands of their soldiers. Really, it will be a defeat for them.’
We enter the endgame in Bakhmut. The longest battle of the war began last July when Russia launched a major offensive after capturing Severodonetsk, the last major Ukrainian city in the Luhansk region. After initial successes, the Russians met staunch Ukrainian resistance, which in the fall forced them to switch from artillery to foot soldiers and turn the city into a slaughterhouse.
By November the Russians had surrounded the city. The Ukrainians dug in and still hold a small part of Bakhmut without surrendering.
Being in Bachmut is like stepping into the past. Hundreds of meters of ditches meander around the city. They are perhaps the safest places in a place that has been almost completely razed to the ground. When I drove through the center in a Land Cruiser with two Ukrainian commandos, it was cratered like the surface of the moon.
We wound our way through mud and water-soaked streets, listening to the bang of the artillery and trying to figure out where it might strike next. Last night, at the base where I was staying, a concrete building deep underground, an official explained the bloody battle here.
Pictured: David Patrikarakos. Ukrainian forces are believed to have recaptured an area of nine square kilometers (three sq miles) this week, marking their biggest push in months
A mortar unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine fires at enemy positions in the suburbs of the city of Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine
“Sometimes it’s like World War I,” he told me. “Two groups of infantry shooting at each other and even bayoneting each other. It’s brutal.’ Almost anything can be used as a weapon in Bakhmut. After we talked, the officer showed me a vodka bottle with a cloth stuffed into the top. “We don’t call it a Molotov cocktail, though,” he said, grinning. “It’s a Ukrainian smoothie!” The problem is that the enemy has endless reserves of infantry.” He was referring to the private mercenary company Wagner Group: a murder gang active everywhere from Ukraine to the Middle East to Africa.
When violence broke out in Sudan, reports reached me that Wagner had fueled the civil war there by aiding the rapid support forces of both Sudanese General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, commander of the Sudanese armed forces. The quid pro quo is simple: the group supplies both sides with arms in exchange for mining concessions that bring millions into their coffers.
A key part of Russia’s strategy at Bakhmut, Wagner is led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a shaven-headed criminal who served nine years in prison. With a penchant for violence and a flair for dirty money, he made it to the head of Putin’s court.
Last year, as Ukrainians began crushing Russian forces on the ground, Prigozhin visited some of Russia’s worst prisons and offered inmates a rad offer: join the fight in Ukraine and if you survive six months, you’ll get one Pardon. But he warned them, most of you will not survive.
He’s an unscrupulous thug who delights in sadism. When it was reported that a recruit had been convicted of murdering and dismembering a woman, Prigozhin laughed it off and insisted Wagner would never recruit someone like that because “women should be fucked, not dismembered”.
Many of the worst offenders have been sent to Bakhmut, where their officers force them to charge at the enemy in what my Ukrainian comrades call “meat gangs” – often pumped full of drugs. The soldiers told me that the attacks were exhausting but that they could handle it. “It just means our automatic weapons are busy,” one official told me.
Prigozhin despises the Russian military high command, which he sees as a rival to his own army. He never misses an opportunity to attack Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov.
Tensions exploded last week when Prigozhin released a video of himself standing in front of rows of dead Wagner fighters. He claimed they died because the Russian army deliberately withheld ammunition from Wagner, implying that he might withdraw his forces from the city.
In the video, Prigozhin’s brutality and vulgarity came into their own. “Shoigu, Gerasimov, where’s the damn ammo?” He spat at the camera.
Smoke rises from buildings in Bakhmut, the site of the heaviest skirmishes with Russian forces in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Ukrainian soldiers fire a mortar at Russian positions on the Bakhmut front
Bachmut is both a dream and a nightmare. It’s a fantasy. This eastern city, just 55 miles from Russian-held Donetsk, has no real strategic value, but Vladimir Putin’s forces have been attempting to capture it since July of last year, killing tens of thousands in the process
“You scum are sitting there in your expensive clubs.” Her kids all jump into life and record her little YouTube videos. I’ll make sure they take responsibility for it. These are Wagner boys who died today. The blood is still fresh. You came here as volunteers and die so you can sit like fat cats.
It was a disgusting video in more ways than one. Prigozhin doesn’t care at all about the many men he sends to their deaths. But when he threatened to pull out of Bakhmut at such a critical juncture, he knew the army had to respond, and they did. Prigozhin has since said the ammunition is coming and, shockingly, that his forces have been given permission to “act in Bakhmut as we see fit”. More atrocities will follow.
As spring arrives and the southeast terrain becomes easier to traverse, the Ukrainians move their forces into attack positions. What military experts call the “shaping” of the coming battle is taking place. The goal is to regain part of the territory stolen from Russia.
But the stakes couldn’t be higher. Kiev knows that the country’s Western allies, who have poured billions of dollars into the war, could become nervous if its armed forces fail to make any significant advances.
Discussions about compromises are already burgeoning in some European capitals. President Zelenskyy knows that. This week he said the counteroffensive would not begin until more military aid was delivered. Britain’s commitment to provide highly effective Storm Shadow cruise missiles, announced by Defense Secretary Ben Wallace on Thursday, is exactly what its soldiers need.
The timing couldn’t be better. Some tell me that there is even talk of Ukrainian forces advancing on Crimea. Should that fall, it would certainly be the end of Putin.
My friend Ivan tells me, “We’re seeing the Russians up close here.” This is all-out war and they’re a threat. Their bombs, their torture, their terror, their disregard for human morals. But they are also afraid of being sent here; Their empire is built on fear: of execution and punishment.
“They are afraid of everything, it is very visible; They cannot admit that they are occupiers, so their motivation is weak. You can easily die from Ukrainian [attacks]. But they can also be shot by their own officers. In Bachmut, death is always and everywhere.’
Grenades, Bombs, Tanks, Planes, Illegal Weapons, Urban Warfare. Bakhmut has become the Stalingrad of Ukraine. Almost 80 years ago, the German Wehrmacht met such resistance in the Russian city that they were forced to send troops from all over occupied Europe to replace their losses there. It was a turning point in the war and became the Red Army’s battle cry.
The Ukrainians may lose Bakhmut, but for the Russians after such a long campaign it will be an empty and costly victory.
A road leads from Bakhmut to the town of Chasiv Yar, just over six miles away. Ukrainians call it the way of life because it has become so important to bring supplies to Bakhmut and to take the dead and wounded away from there.
As I drove out of town with Strangeman, I looked at the devastation around me and thought that Bakhmut, in his own way, has become a symbol of Ukraine’s path in life, representing its ongoing resistance, the only path it can take Escape from the madness of the Kremlin.
In this city, shades of gray dissolve into black and white. The struggle is simple: oppression versus resistance; democracy versus dictatorship; The Ukraine war in microcosm. Whenever I spend time with the Ukrainian soldiers, they always insist on thanking Britain for all their support.
‘God save the king! God bless Boris Johnson!’ they repeat themselves over and over again. I tell them that we’re not just helping because it’s the right thing to do, but because the whole world needs to take a stand against Putin’s insanity. Whether we like it or not, this fight affects us all.
I still dream about Bakhmut, but it will be a dream of a different kind. One in which Ukraine could be free again. As Ivan told me. “If I have to die here, I will. Even if it’s just so my son doesn’t have to come back here one day and do the same thing.”
- David Patrikarakos is UnHerd’s foreign correspondent and author of War In 140 Characters.