“If our counter-offensive does not start soon, Bachmut will be lost.”

The area resembles an army camp. In every forest, no matter how small, you can see vehicles or artillery pieces of the Ukrainian army, some of which are hidden under camouflage nets. Spring has only just begun and the bright green leaves on the trees have not yet formed a canopy under which to hide from the cameras of the reconnaissance drones. Only the apricot trees are in full bloom, an almost grotesque sign of life amidst these fields of death.

In a hamlet, several Ukrainian battle tanks stand in the gardens of houses with asbestos gabled roofs. Most of the homes are deserted, only a few civilians can be seen holding out despite the constant artillery fire. At the very edge of the hamlet, soldiers have parked a captured Russian T-62 main battle tank.

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This type was produced in the Soviet Union between 1962 and 1975. The Ukrainians painted the word “Satan” in Cyrillic letters on the museum piece, which they now use to fight against the invaders near the city of Bakhmut – in the largest and bloodiest battle of the war to date.

Fight the noise late into the night

We drive past a so-called stabilization post. This is a small field hospital where the injured receive first aid before being transported to a larger hospital. A few vans are parked in front of the post, serving as makeshift ambulances. One of the vehicles has a Graubünden license plate.

We continue on a track about four kilometers from the front at Bakhmut. The noise of the battle around the small eastern Ukrainian town is deafening. On this day rarely more than 5 seconds pass from one blast to the next. The Ukrainians respond to the impact of Russian shells and rockets with their guns and grenade launchers.

American M109 self-propelled howitzers are also involved. They regularly change positions to make it difficult for the Russians to find their positions. Sometimes even the flight sounds of shells can be heard high in the sky. When Russian batteries fire multiple rocket launchers, the impacts occur in such quick succession that the individual explosions are barely distinguishable. It is like a mighty thunderstorm, a rumble that lasts long into the night.

The problems of the Ukrainian army

A soldier I met in February 2022, in the first days of the war, talks about the problems of the Ukrainian army at Bakhmut. Oleksandr, as I call him to protect himself, has been stationed in the area for a long time and knows his stuff. “The Russians complain when they get only 60 shells per barrel per day. With us, on the other hand, it is often only ten shells.”

In Bakhmut, the Russian Wagner mercenaries systematically destroyed every building held by Ukrainians, usually with artillery, but sometimes the Russian air force dropped heavy aerial bombs. Entire Ukrainian positions would be wiped out at once.

“Our losses are considerable. But the army command hopes that they will tie down and decimate the Wagner troops in Bachmut, so that the Russians cannot deploy the mercenaries on other sectors of the front. If our counter-offensive does not start soon, Bachmut is lost.”

Fixings on both sides of the front

Bakhmut is surrounded on three sides by Wagner mercenaries and Russian airborne troops. In recent weeks, the Russians managed to advance slowly but steadily. They have now taken the city center and the railway station, while the Ukrainians are entrenched in the western part behind the railway line.

The Russians now control an estimated 80 percent of the city’s territory. Two roads lead to Bakhmut from the west, but both supply routes run close to the front and are under artillery fire from the Russians. Sometimes the Ukrainians have to zigzag across open fields to bring reinforcements and ammunition into town or to evacuate the wounded.

About seven kilometers west of the suburbs of Bakhmut, the next larger town, Chasiw Yar, sits on a hill. Between them runs a canal from north to south, which was built in Soviet times to supply drinking water to the Donbass.

On the western bank, the Ukrainians have already built extensive defensive positions – in case Bakhmut falls completely into Russian hands. The fields in the Donbass around Bakhmut are intersected with trenches, there are staggered positions with concrete bunkers and so-called dragon’s teeth, over medium-high concrete pyramids, used as anti-tank obstacles. There are minefields in some places.

Russia is building fortifications in Crimea

The Ukrainian dragon’s teeth are identical to those that Moscow’s army installed en masse to secure its conquests. In recent months, the Russians have also been building staggered fortifications behind the approximately 800-kilometer front, especially in the south and at the entrance to the Crimean peninsula, where the Russian military command most likely expects a Ukrainian counter-offensive.

A few bridges cross the channel separating Bakhmut from the western hinterland at Chasiv Yar. The Ukrainians blew up the main of these as the Russians tried to advance on Chasiv Yar from the south.

The attack was repelled, but later the Kiev army missed this important crossroads for supplies to Bakhmut. “In the meantime, our technical troops have built an improvised crossing point,” says soldier Oleksandr, “so that we can partially use the road again.”

Tatjana Velikolug lives a stone’s throw from the canal. Her parents came from western Ukraine during the Soviet era, while her mother came from Russia. The couple came to Chasiv Yar to help build the canal. Tatjana later worked for 40 years as a lab assistant for the drinking water supply of Bachmut. But intensified Russian attacks forced the company to give up last fall – and Tatyana to flee to Chasiv Yar.

Great resilience

In the neighboring town, just a few miles away, relatives and acquaintances then entrusted the 64-year-old with 20 cats and 8 dogs before fleeing as war approached. Tatyana was able to forward these animals to volunteers in major Ukrainian cities.

With the increasing Russian artillery fire, the electricity and gas networks collapsed in addition to the water supply in Chasiw Yar – and with it mobile communications. Now it became increasingly difficult for Tatyana to catch stray animals and give them to volunteers in other, more peaceful cities.

Today, only about 200 citizens still live in the city, which used to have a population of about 12,000. Some of them gave their pets to Tatyana, who already took care of two dogs herself. The number of dogs that are now romping in Tatjana’s small house and garden has risen to 20. There are also two cats.

Some of the animals are traumatized by the shelling, hiding under the dining table or looking anxiously at the sky outside. Only a short, stocky man with blind eyes gropes about fearlessly. Two large dogs come from Bachmut.

Tatjana keeps the food in empty ammunition boxes in the garden. She cooks corn meal on a stove, which she heats with fallen wood and, increasingly, with planks from destroyed houses. To grind corn kernels, she got an electric mill.

“And because there is no electricity, I have given myself a generator for International Women’s Day on March 8, with which I can run the mill,” the woman laughs, while a British coat of mail rattles past a block away. The mental toughness of the 64-year-old seems unbroken.