"It was the hardest month for all of us" Report from Bakhmut
In the second half of August, the Russians reported that they were fighting in Bakhmut, namely on its eastern border, Patrice Lumumba Street. At that time, the Wagner Group mercenaries occupied several outlying houses on the outskirts of the city. Six months have passed since then.
At the end of winter 2023, the Russians had not yet taken Bakhmut. However, the situation there for the Defense Forces can now be called critical. The Russians' tactics are clear: they are pressing on the outskirts of the city from the north to cut off the last route for Ukrainian troops to supply equipment, ammunition, and people.
hromadske journalists Nastia Stanko and Kolian Pastyko spent a day with the 93rd Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 600 meters away from the enemy, which holds positions across the Bakhmutka River.
This is my sixth visit to Bakhmut since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. In May, the videographer Kolian Pastyk and I were eating pizza at the Bakhmut “New York” pizzeria. In 2014-2016, we often stopped there on our way back from the front line. At that time, Bakhmut was a deeply rear-guard town where we stayed for the night during our frontline trips, had lunch and dinner, or edited videos and wrote reports.
In June 2022, we came here to the hospital, which at that time was a rear hospital. Not too seriously wounded people were brought here from the battlefields of Lysychansk and Svitlodarsk.
In July, the fighting was on the outskirts of Bakhmut, but the active shelling of the city had already begun. We met a high-ranking former police officer here, who is now a junior officer in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Even then, they started talking about the possibility that the Russians might capture the city.
Just a few weeks before we spoke, we lost Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, the largest cities in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Luhansk Oblast. By mid-summer, the situation at the front was dire, and Ukraine was sorely short of ammunition and artillery. It's funny to think back now, but in July 2022, they were afraid to take us to the places we ended up in February 2023.
In mid-August, when the fighting approached the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut, the 93rd Brigade moved into position there. It was redeployed from the Izium sector. It held the line until October, then went on a two-week rotation and stayed in the city until December.
At the end of 2022, our film crew witnessed the work of the medical company of this brigade in the stabilization center of Bakhmut. Today, the street where this medical facility was located can be easily shelled by an anti-tank guided missile. The brigade left for another month of recuperation and returned to Bakhmut, where street fighting has already broken out. There is almost nowhere to retreat in the city. But Bakhmut is a fortress. And it is still standing.
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At the end of February 2023, Iryna, a press officer with the 93rd Brigade, and I are driving along the Kostiantynivka-Bakhmut highway. Before reaching the city, we turn left to Chasov Yar and from there we head to Bakhmut on another road — the last one that can still reach the city, which still has more than five thousand residents under daily shelling. For thousands of soldiers, this town is both a temporary home and a place of work.
Ira travels this road every day. Two weeks ago, the command of this defense sector allowed journalists to travel to Bakhmut only with a special pass. Since then, the number of people wishing to visit Bakhmut has significantly decreased.
Five days ago, we were already here, and in the north of the city we could hear gunfire, and a few kilometers to the south, a market was open at the entrance and people were buying food. Today there is no market. There is no traffic either. Except for a few armored vehicles that quickly slip into the side streets.
It seems that the city is empty. But in fact, there are thousands of soldiers here. We're driving down a street very close to the southern outskirts of the city, and it's also being attacked, but the situation in that area has improved over the last few days.
However, it's scary to drive so close to the enemy, and I immediately squeeze into the seat. We pass the center and realize that we are getting closer to the Russians. We stop. We run to the entrance of a multi-story building that was hit by a Grad MLRS right away. Soldiers are standing there. We introduce ourselves.
Ten of them were mobilized a month ago. Yesterday, after the exercises, they were sent to Bakhmut. They were given a day to adapt before being sent back to “zero”.
The adaptation was tough. Yesterday, everything hit here. We ask where the zero is.
“It’s over here,” they answer, “our guys' positions are 200 meters away, and the Russians are not even a kilometer away,” says an experienced senior company driver.
“Did you have any experience before February 24?” I ask.
“I had a hunting rifle, I used to go hunting,” a man with the call sign “Parliament”, after the cigarettes he smokes, laughs.
"Everyone is afraid, but what can we do?” he explains to the guys who have been at war for two days.
While we are talking at the entrance, we hear the sound of an An automatic grenade launcherAGL operating. A local woman walks down the street. I ask her if she lives here.
“I live everywhere, both here and in that entrance.” Afew minutes later, she returns.
"A bullet whizzed over my ear,” she says and goes on.
I ask the Parliament whether this is possible.
“Yes, it is, everything is already hitting here,” hereplies.
We go up to the first floor of a high-rise building. The newly mobilized soldiers are warming themselves with trench candles in the living room of an apartment that belonged to someone else until recently.
“In the morning, no one wanted to go to zero, but we talked, so eight of them do now, and two still don't want to go.”
I ask how they are distributed at zero.
“Well, of course, inexperienced soldiers join experienced ones, they will teach you everything. What can you learn in the training center? How to shoot, how to squat. And that's it.”
“Parliament” is 41 years old. He has a wife, daughters, and grandchildren. During the year of the full-scale war, he managed to hold various positions. He was in the trenches, got wounded, and returned to war again.
“At the This is the third time the 93rd Brigade has entered the area in the last six monthsthirdThis is the third time the 93rd Brigade has entered the area in the last six monthsBakhmut, a shell fragment hit my leg, and my wife did not want to let me go. As soon as we settled in, an A Soviet anti-aircraft missile systemS-300 hit, apparently, someone had given us up.”
“When we first came here in mid-August, the fighting was still in the neighborhood, it was such a small forest belt, such small plantations. And from mid-August to the end of October, we were in positions literally one or two plantations away. It is just 200 meters.
Then we were withdrawn for two weeks to be manned up, and we went back in. But not to the same positions, the area sagged a bit, but we got one intersection in our area of responsibility, completely held all the positions, there was no loss of territory at all, and then we went on rotation with the whole brigade, and came back here again, only to be engaged in urban combat,” says drone operator Zhenia, call sign “Stus”.
He is 24, and he was a friend of the soldier and Kyiv activist Roman Ratushnyi who died near Izium.
To meet with Zhenia, we had to run from one building to another, where a piece of terrain can be shelled, and climb into the basement of a high-rise building with a Starlink to contact him and specify the meeting place and time.
After that, we had to memorize the roads that were safe to go there (not the ones shown on the Google map, because it showed us exactly the road that could be shot at by an anti-tank missile), and try to get there alive and unharmed, and at the end of the day, run through the intersection that could be shot at. Then you just have to find some basement and wait for Stus there, because there is no connection in the city for a long time.
Zhenia will be flying from this building and adjusting our artillery. His task is to find Russian tanks and other armored vehicles. But lately, he has been tracking the Russian infantry, which advances on our positions in several waves every day.
He works both day and night. Some operators go to quieter cities to sleep at night and then return to Bakhmut. But Zhenia says it's a waste of time, so he lives here.
“It was the hardest month for the entire team. Because of everything. Because of the positions we have here, because of the street fighting. This month we were more tired than the previous three,” says Zhenia.
We are talking in one of the basements of a broken-down apartment building in the center of Bakhmut. Zhenia goes up to the second floor, directly into someone's apartment, where they were doing repairs before they left, leaving their tools on the floor. The glass on the windows has already been broken by numerous shelling.
Zhenoa opens the door to the balcony and sits on top of the glass with the Mavic remote control to see what the Russians, who are a kilometer and a half away, are doing.
Across the river, where his drone is flying, there are fierce battles, and people are dying there every day. We talk for 15 minutes and during this time we hear a dozen explosions.
Zhenia is from here, near Sloviansk. If the Russians succeed in capturing Bakhmut, they will then go to the place where he was born.
“They say that there are a lot of people who are waiting for Russians left here as if there is no one to fight for. People stayed here for various reasons, even at a conditional “zero” between us and the Russians, and to rely on this, that there are only people who are waiting for Russians left here so we should not defend this land, is complete nonsense.
I'm fighting and doing my best because there are a lot of great people in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. Donbas nationalism is the fiercest and sincerest. If you were born here and took a strong pro-Ukrainian position, it is stronger than many people's because you have had many obstacles since childhood. And I defend these people as well.”
“Stus” is indignant at the advice of American intelligence, which allegedly advised the Ukrainian command not to waste efforts on defending Bakhmut but to focus on preparing a counteroffensive in another direction.
“It makes no sense to leave Bakhmut. The situation is deteriorating, our flanks are being pressed, and there are risks of encirclement, but from a global perspective, if we leave here, Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, and Sloviansk will be destroyed. If the situation shows that we need to leave the city, our military command will do so. As long as we can fight here and hold on, we will do so. If we retreat, this Russian wave of kindness will roll on.”