Of all the fighting in the east, President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week that the “toughest” is here. Yet in the fight for control of a shattered city, military experts say the ambitions of Russian oligarch and founder of the Wagnerian mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozin may have overshadowed all strategic logic.
The battle for Bakhmut is no longer part of any coordinated military operation after Russia’s disorderly retreat from nearby Izyum. Instead, Prigozin is throwing wave after wave of Wagner’s mercenaries into battle, seemingly seeing the political advantage of capturing Bakhmut as military spoils, while President Vladimir Putin’s regular forces are in Elsewhere is disadvantaged.
The under-strength, outnumbered and exhausted Ukrainian army is relying on more nimble tactics to fend off brutal combat, with newly recruited engineers monitoring enemy lines with civilian drones as they experiment with custom weapons in pop-up labs in a nearby abandoned building.
“Honestly, we have to do it,” said Vlad, who is overseeing the 93rd Brigade’s work to retrofit drones, anti-tank mines and other weapons to make them more effective. “The Russians have soldiers, guns and everything. We need to be smart,” he said.
Before February 20 in Russia, the salt mining city of Bakhmut had a population of 70,000. 24 Invasion of Ukraine. There may have been 15,000 more, but the streets were nearly deserted due to intense fighting there this week. Weeds flooded the wheat fields. Military vehicles zip past rocket-battered roads, kicking up dust as they travel.
At the command post of the 93rd Brigade, a drone operator gazes at the real-time information it sends back to his Russian positions. Soldiers worked fast, sliding mortar rounds off the barrels and scattering them from the sky. Someone scribbled “Supervisor” on the drone operator’s chair. He squinted at the tablet screen, waited a moment, then nodded, and a ripple of joy spread across the men.
But Dima, their 25-year-old commander, said it was still the worst day for the unit. The night before, as darkness enveloped their dugout, Russian troops fired on them with mortars and cluster munitions. “It’s not the first time we’ve been attacked, but it’s different now,” Dima said.
After four years in the Ukrainian army, Dima said the battle of Bakhmut was one of the “most dangerous” battles he had ever witnessed.
The battle and its echoes loomed heavily in the city on Wednesday. The air quivered with the sound of shelling. When everything was quiet, there was only the tinkling of metal in the wind.
Oleksander, a 51-year-old entrepreneur, had dried blood on his face after a rocket attack destroyed his home the previous night. He has no clean water to wash. He said he invited his neighbors, a young couple and their daughter, to live with him in the apartment, thinking it would be safer if they were together.
The parents are now in intensive care, and their nine-year-old child Lisa has been evacuated to another city alone, he said.
“I thought our place was safer,” he said blankly. “We’re just sitting there. We’re drinking tea.”
In a recent analysis, the Washington-based think tank the Institute for War Studies said Prigozin’s Bakhmut operation was “operationally irrelevant” after Russia lost Izyum, 60 miles north.
The report concludes: “Given that Russian forces have been impaling themselves in tiny surrounding settlements for weeks, it is unlikely that Russia will capture Bakhmut, which would no longer support further changes to achieve the initial objectives of this phase of the campaign. Great effort.” Because it would not be supported by a push from Izum in the north. “
Prigozin, who has been dubbed Putin’s chef because he made his fortune through government catering contracts, has been a strong critic of the performance of the Russian regular army in Ukraine. Analysts see his involvement in the Ukraine war as part of an effort to curry favor and potentially sign additional state contracts. Russian elites have also speculated that he is fighting for a government job.
Wagner played a key role in the capture of Popasna in May, but reported heavy losses. Prigozin was awarded the country’s highest honor, the Order of the Hero of Russia, the following month, according to pro-Kremlin military bloggers.
Prigozin, who has long denied any ties to Wagner, who has sent mercenaries to Syria, Libya, Mali, Mozambique and the Central African Republic, admitted last month that he founded the group. In a recent self-published interview, he claimed that Wagner carried out the attack on Bachmut alone, calling the situation “difficult.”
For the Ukrainians, surrendering Bakhmut would give the Russians a huge symbolic victory and undermine the popular narrative that Moscow’s army was steadily losing ground and Putin’s war was losing. In theory, capturing Bakhmut would bring the Russians closer to the larger urban centers of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, but there is little evidence that the Russians can push them now.
At four locations in the Bakhmut region, Ukrainian soldiers described what appeared to be Wagnerian forces at times almost used as cannon fodder. “They treat them like one-off soldiers,” said Voladimir, the 24-year-old commander of the self-propelled artillery unit, as he waited for observers to call in new targets. Usually infantry, he said.
“If we shelled these positions, they would push these men forward again and again,” the second soldier said. “They wanted to smoke us out and then open fire on us.”
From the positions of the 93rd Brigade, drone operators have seen mercenaries trip over the bodies of fallen comrades as they advance.
A Russian journalist filmed Wagner’s frontline positions near Bakhmut late last month, where Prigozin’s son was reported to be fighting and interviewed, without naming him.
“Bakhmut is a road leading in many directions. It is a very important strategic point for the Ukrainian army and for us,” another fighter said in the video. “Their team is ready to fight to the end, whatever the loss.”
The scale of the Russian losses is unclear, but Ukrainian soldiers interviewed said they estimated the damage to be heavy. “Their numbers are huge because they don’t treat them like people,” said Misha, a 25-year-old soldier from the 93rd Brigade.
Ukrainian casualties were also heavy. Ambulances shuttled back and forth between firing positions in Ukraine last week, apparently transporting wounded from the front lines.
At a nearby hospital, two soldiers said they had taken four members of the force to the emergency room, three of them in critical condition, after Russia was hit by rockets in Bakhmut. Their bloodstained jackets were still in the car. In a video taken shortly after the incident, a fourth man was seen howling in pain as his femur snapped at a sickening angle.
The day before, another company was surrounded by Russian troops and opened fire on them, they said. “They didn’t even leave debris,” said one of the soldiers, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of describing Ukrainian casualties.
For the inhabitants of Bahmut, not much remains. Rockets are bombarding the city every day. A civilian doctor tried to mend the wound, but the walking wounded usually just pulled the shrapnel out of them themselves.
This week, Vitalii Kuzmienko, 52, stood on the east bank of the Bachmutka River, gazing at a damaged bridge whose deck was blown away, leaving a huge gap in the midspan. To stop the advance of Russian troops, the Ukrainians laid anti-tank mines on one side, but these never detonated.
Kuzminko said his house was destroyed in the fighting, so he lived among the wreckage of the souk. He said his relatives were buried in Bachmut and he did not want to leave them.
Breathing alcohol, Kuzminko feared the shelling could hit bridges, detonate unexploded mines and damage nearby homes. He said he now drinks every day to numb the fear and help him sleep.
Moments later, four rockets landed on the bank, and he barely moved.
Serhii Korolchuk and Wojciech Grzedzinski contributed to this report.