Ukrainians describe smashing ‘wave after wave’ of Russians in Bakhmut
Ukraine: Drone captures destruction in Bakhmut
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Ukrainian fighters have described sending waves of Russian soldiers to their deaths as they continue to defend an area known as the “Bakhmut meat grinder”. One soldier said the nearby fields “stink” because of all the dead soldiers.
Bakhmut is an important area in the Donetsk Oblast region in the East of Ukraine that acts as a crossroad with major roads in Donetsk running through it.
The town, which housed 70,000 people before the conflict, is currently seeing the heaviest ongoing fighting in the war.
The Russians reached the Eastern outskirts of the region back in July as part of an offensive that saw them seize the cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk.
Recently, they have been pouring vast forces into Bakhmut in an attempt to take it from the Ukrainians. In particular, Russian soldiers from the Wagner private military company have reportedly been coming in waves to take the region.
Many Wagner fighters are convicts who are executed if they desert their posts. They are given the promise of freedom if they survive six months.
“Nobody cares about their lives,” one soldier called Yuri told the Wall Street Journal.
He added: “We shoot them, and they keep coming back, like cockroaches. The fields all around us stink because of their corpses, but there is still one wave coming after another.”
One military commander, who leads a Ukrainian Akatsiya 152 mm howitzer battery military told the publication that they have a “huge concentration” of artillery in the area.
He said that he estimates that the Russians are starting to run out of ammunition now.
Yet, the Ukrainians haven’t been unharmed in the months of intense fighting in Bakhmut. One soldier said that Ukraine is facing the loss of “some of our best”.
Sergiy Stakhovsky, a Ukrainian tennis player who fights in the area said: “The Russians are emptying their prisons and sending their worst to die here, while we are losing some of our best. It’s not at all a fair trade.”
One retired Ukrainian soldier called colonel Serhiy Grabskiy, now an analyst in Kyiv said the situation “reminds” him of trench warfare in the First World War.
Many of the troops shoot each other from foxholes over dirty water and from water-logged trenches that go on for miles.
Grabskiy told CBC: “The Russians are sending in wave after wave against [fortified] Ukrainian positions.”
Experts suggest different reasons for the importance of Bakhmut for both sides.
According to some experts, if Russia captured the town and surrounding areas it could create a launchpad for future offensives against northern cities like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
The defence analyst Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting in Poland told Moscow Times: “No one really understands the significance of Bakhmut.
“No one can really explain… why Russians are fighting so ferociously for it.”
The defence analyst Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting in Poland told Moscow Times: “No one really understands the significance of Bakhmut.
“No one can really explain… why Russians are fighting so ferociously for it.”
One possibility is that the Russians feel like they can’t back down since they’ve already used so many men to try to take it.
Muzyka added: “Russia has been fighting for such a long time, they think they may as well do everything they can to capture Bakhmut.”
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