Resistance
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Files on the Ukraine-Russia WarUkrainians still hold a few square kilometers of the city of Donbass, which the Russian army and Wagner’s mercenaries have been fighting for more than nine months. The advances of the two camps are counted in hectometers and cost a large number of dead.
Since the beginning of the war, Ukrainian soldiers have defended their cities down to the last street and block, even turning them into a smoking field of ruins. The men of Azov’s regiment held out for weeks at the besieged Mariupol Steel Works. The defenders of Severodonetsk remained where they were until the city was almost completely destroyed by the Russians. In Bakhmout, more than nine months after the fighting began, the battle for the city is still ongoing, although the outcome is certain.
The Russian army and Wagner’s auxiliaries hold at least 80% of the city, while the Ukrainians are concentrated in a small zone of two to three square kilometers to the far west of the metropolitan area. “Their defense system is based on three strengths: the Olympic School to the north-east, the ‘citadel’ in the centre, and rue Tchaikovsky to the south,” writes Olivier Kempf, a researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research, in his weekly Frontline report. The citadel consists of barr