Group Wagner puts pressure on Bachmut: Visit to destroyed city in the heat of summer costs 10,000 lives in France

A junkyard in southern Bakhmut. The owners move back and forth on the property. Drinking coffee. Laugh. Their teeth are black, their eyes glassy and red. Next door, a Ukrainian military unit fires artillery and machine gun fire echoes through the houses. At the same time, projectiles fly over the area.

Only very rarely do people duck. The sounds have become part of their daily lives. The front on the southern edge is a mile or two away.

Bakhmut, together with Avdiivka, is currently the most fought-over city in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian General Staff announced Monday evening. The small town of Bakhmut is part of the Ukrainian defensive belt east of the conurbation between Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Since Ukrainian troops liberated the southern city of Kherson from Russian occupation, Russia has stepped up its efforts in the east. Russian troops from Kherson were also transferred to the front in Bakhmut.

The city is a strategically important destination of Russia due to the approaching winter. Until now, the fighting has mainly taken place on the outskirts of the city. In the east of the city, which is separated from the rest of Bakhmut by a river, the battle rages. The Russian forces and mercenaries of the Wagner Group want to penetrate deeper. The Wagner Group has been exerting pressure on the town for months.

Russia’s efforts are also visible in southern Bakhmut. There, in the junkyard.

The background noise here is deafening. Which side the projectile was fired from can only be seen when the projectile appears in the air above the person – then you can hear which direction it is flying.

Attack on a transmission tower in Bachmut

The front line is too close. Every artillery launch sounds the same. Shot, whistle, sound. And it bursts. Sometimes south of the junkyard, sometimes north. There is a maximum of three or four seconds between them.

On this day in November, the Russian side on the southern front is targeting an area around a transmission tower, which is close to an inner-city highway in Bachmut. The explosions in this area are clearly visible from the junkyard.

The battle for the city is also regularly raised by the Ukrainian government. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks of bitter and heavy fighting in the Donbass. There is “neither relaxation nor breathing space,” Zelenskyj said in one of his daily video addresses. The Ukrainian troops would be supported by border guard units from Kharkiv and Sumy. A National Guard brigade is active in Bakhmut. “We will not give in to the enemy in any of the front areas,” Zelensky said. “We react everywhere, we hold our positions everywhere.”

In particular, the fighting in the Donetsk region, including in Bakhmut, has increased considerably in recent times. A Ukrainian soldier took to social networks to report on the heaviest fighting since he was transferred to the front at Bakhmut.

Despite the heavy fighting, the course of the front hardly changed, according to the military situation reports from both sides. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that provide humanitarian aid in the combat zones report similar reports. You can hear from the sounds – it mainly concerns machine guns – that the front is moving back and forth. However, there were no major successes to report from either the Russian or the Ukrainian side.

Bachmut has been a Russian target since May

Most Ukrainian NGOs have military and intelligence ties. They make you reassess the situation at the front on a daily basis.

And for months.

Bakhmut came to the center of attention of the Russian military in May. After Russia took the town of Popasna further east, they were close enough to fire artillery at close range. In the spring, the city had reported only a few attacks. The first people fled, but many only moved a few hundred kilometers to the large city of Dnipro.

At that time, the German organizations “Leave no one Behind” and “STELP” were also on site to evacuate people from Bachmut. watson had accompanied her at the time.

Now, in November, Bachmut is just a mess. Compared to the impressions of May, the city is almost unrecognizable. Hardly a house was spared from the attacks.

The streets are constantly pierced with rockets and artillery. Duds stuck in the asphalt, bus lines hanging out of the sky. The Ukrainian army is constantly racing through the city center in old Ladas. The mountains of garbage grow in the poorly marked residential areas. A pungent odor mingles with the smoke billowing from the front doors of the remaining residents.

Here they cook if they still have something to cook.

Because the humanitarian situation in Bachmut is deteriorating. There are still small supermarkets that are open. The only question is: for how long? Supermarkets need to be stocked. Apparently the supply chains are still functioning to some extent. Unlike the case in the Luhansk region in May. The city of Bakhmut can even still operate a hospital – although it has already been bombed.

Yet the local population is starving. Drinking water is only available at designated locations. The main target of Russian attacks is critical infrastructure. Electricity, water, rail network. With an aid organization on tour through the city centre, it is noticeable that older women in particular can no longer meet their basic needs. Members of the NGO are asked for food every few metres.

Poverty rules the city. And some people are still fleeing from this area.

The evacuations from Bakhmut continue

Back to the junkyard south of town. Here is a woman standing at the entrance of a bunker. It is cold, the air is damp, the surroundings are a metal battlefield. She strapped her Chihuahua puppy to her chest with the jacket. The woman holds a cigarette in one hand. With the other she supports her dog.

The dog starts to bark. The woman with the black hair laughs and strokes the trembling dog. On this day, a Ukrainian aid organization evacuates 15 people from Bakhmut. The woman will be one of them.

There is hardly any light in the bunker. Only a battery-operated chain of LED lamps hangs from the two-meter high ceiling. Until the owner of this area turns on an emergency generator. It rattles and buzzes. So loud that it almost completely overshadows the background noise of the war. But it helps against the darkness. Against the cold.

The bunker is filling up. People from the east of the city are brought here by the organization so that they can finally leave the war zone together. The Chihuahua puppy wanders and trembles among the waiting people. The impacts not far away can also be heard behind the thick concrete walls. Despite the backup generator.

In one corner, the puppy licks a plastic container with leftover vegetable stew. People have been staying, cooking and living in this cellar for weeks. After four hours, the fugitives leave the area.

It goes fast. Leave the workshop. On the street. On the right is the inner city highway of Bachmuts. That should be the way. The car full of refugees turns and accelerates. 200 meters further a transmission mast comes into view.

A cell tower… this cell tower.

There is no time to react. There it is: the impact. About 150 to 200 meters away.

Black smoke rises.

emergency braking. U turn.

Out.