War in Ukraine: Almost surrounded, Ukrainian soldiers push back the Russians

CHASIV YAR, Ukraine – Queuing in the dark on civilian vehicles, lights off, a company of soldiers He waited silently by the side of a road. A second company was stationed further back and an occasional light inside a car revealed a soldier’s face. Further back still, a third company was positioning itself.

After months of pitched battle, the fight for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut seemed to have reached its climax in recent days, as Russian forces were about to encircle the city and some Ukrainian units were retreating.

So first thing on Saturday, Ukrainian assault brigades went on the attack. Over the weekend, hundreds of troops joined the counter-offensive, mounting ground attacks and bombarding Russian positions with artillery from the surrounding hills.

Ukrainian commanders acknowledged their forces at Bakhmut were still at risk of being encircled, but the weekend’s fighting showed that an army that surprised the world with its toughness he was not yet ready to give up on Bakhmut. It was not so clear how control of the city fit into the master plans.

Even before Ukraine stepped up attacks on the Russians in Bakhmut over the weekend, its forces had mobilized push back the Russian troops from the last main access road to the city.

In this way it was preserved a power line who has been helping Ukrainian soldiers stop the Russian offensive for months a way out for them in case they decide to withdraw.

“I am confident that Bakhmut will hold out,” said Colonel Yevhen Mezhevikin, commander of a combined battle group fighting Bakhmut.

“We have enough forces to push the enemy out of this city, but it depends on the tasks of the command, whether it is to hold the city or inflict maximum losses on the enemy.”

On the ground, other soldiers they seem much less confident.

The true value of Bakhmut

Bakhmut, which had a population of 70,000 before the war, it has little strategic value. He was simply next in line for a Russian offensive to take eastern Donetsk province.

But the battle for the city makes up a turning point in the war for both the Russian and Ukrainian armies. The fight is no longer about Bakhmut: it’s about a competition to see which army can defeat the other.

Russia launched tens of thousands of newly mobilized soldiers in a massive ground attack to take the city. from sheer firepower and manpower. Ukraine has used all the tactics learned during a year of war to hold its ground and inflict the maximum number of casualties on the invader, often fight house to house in neighborhoods of destroyed houses and stunted trees.

In recent weeks, Ukrainian troops have not stopped losing ground, ceding cities and peripheral suburbs. And the end of winter is particularly harsh. Weeks of freezing temperatures and now the start of the mud season they have exhausted their strength, the soldiers said.

“The fog is constant: at night we see almost nothing,” the commander of a combat drone unit of the 59th Brigade, codenamed Madyar, said in a video message from the front.

“The temperature has been above freezing for the third day,” he added. “Everything has melted. There is mud up to the knees. It rains ten times a day. This makes tactical tasks difficult.”

Madyar said his unit was pulling out late last week. Other units did as well. It is still unclear whether the moves were part of a rotation or a controlled pullback.

relentless attack

In a nearby town, Chasiv Yar, the terrifying power of the Russian attack is unmistakable. Shops and houses are barred and the streets deserted, apart from a few civilians carrying plastic shopping bags. In recent visits, explosions have been almost constant: Ukrainian artillery fired at Russian positions in and around Bakhmut and Russian guns returned fire.

Lena, a woman who was walking home with groceries on Saturday afternoon, ignored the explosions, barely looking at the unexploded rockets sticking out of the asphalt.

“My daughter left, but I stayed,” he said. “It’s my home.”

Others are leaving.

Early this morning last week, rescue teams from the solidarity organization Save Ukraine rushed to evacuate some of the last residents of a particularly exposed neighborhood near the canal.

They pulled out a couple, Viktor, 73, and Lyudmila, 67, who had fled their home after their neighbor’s house was hit by a shell. A second marriage refused to leave. The husband said his wife I had a stomach ache.

Units of the Ukrainian army are scattered across the rolling hills surrounding Chasiv Yar and Bakhmut. artillery guns elThe tanks are lined up among the trees and the soldiers, dispersed in private homes, with their vehicles hidden under camouflage nets or behind buildings.

In the sky, from time to time you see Ukrainian planes, often in the morning on front-line sorties. But this is primarily artillery warfare.

“We repulse 15 to 20 attacks a day,” said Vladyslav, 26, the commander of a self-propelled artillery battery located 6-7 kilometers from Bakhmut. “Everything’s more or less fine today,” he said cheerfully.

The rate of artillery fire was unusual.

“Imagine: twenty boys come, we kill them. In five minutes twenty other boys come, we kill them. In an hour, twenty more. They don’t care about the men.”

“On average, we shoot between 80 and 120 shots per day”said Vladyslav. “In a month and a half, we fired more than 5,000 shells.”

But artillery ammunition They’re running outproblem which, according to the high command, helps to explain the constant loss of ground.

“There is a shortage,” Mezhevikin said. “I would like to have more people, more vehicles, more ammunition to destroy the enemy on the approaches and their reserves, so that our people have fewer losses and do not have such intense fighting.”

Units have had to learn to be careful with their ammunition, explained Major Olexander Pantsyrny, commander of the Aidar Assault Battalion, a renowned combat unit. “You have to plan constantly, calculate your ammo consumption.”

“A Worthy Opponent”

Such restrictions make it difficult for Ukrainian combat units to be arrested the progress of the Wagner groupa private military company leading the Russian offensive to take Bakhmut.

The Wagner group has strengthened its troops with thousands of condemned, But its top professionals have proven to be skilled fighters, according to several Ukrainian commanders who have fought against them.

“We realized they were a worthy opponent,” Pantsyrny said. “They have decent combat experience; they have motivated personnel.”

Pantsyrny’s battalion was sent to attack Wagner’s positions in the village of Kodema, south of Bakhmut.

“The enemy was sending 20 men to attack six or seven times a day,” said Olexander, a company commander who took part in the assault. He didn’t give his last name following military protocol.

“Imagine: twenty boys arrive, we kill them. In five minutes twenty other boys arrive, we kill them. In an hour, another twenty. They don’t care about men“.

Then, after three weeks, the Russians surprised the battalions with a side move, breaking through to a weaker unit from the side. The Aidar battalion was forced to retreat.

A commander of another battalion, Dnipro 1, who had spent months fighting the Wagner units, said he found them more agile and resourceful than most units in the Russian army.

The commander, who uses the code name Duke, Wagner said used inmates without training in the front line of attack and then, after an hour or two, when the Ukrainian troops were getting tired, sent special forcesattack from the flanks. “She was a great tactician,” Duke said.

elimination zone

However, Ukraine was able to use Bakhmut as a “killing zone”. reduce the large number of Russian soldiers newly mobilized soldiers who were brought to the battlefield late last year, he noted. Wagner’s forces are also said to have They’ve been out of stock since the summer.

“We broke his spine; we killed all their military personnelsaid Pantsirny.

He added that there are apparently only a few professional soldiers left. directing thousands of prisoners that they had been recruited to fill the ranks and that the losses were substantial: “They try something, but the results are just not the same.”

However, Russian troops are advancing thanks to their greater number, strengthened by tens of thousands of inexperienced recruits and through pure brute force. Sometimes they destroy entire city blocks to take down a single sniper, according to a unit of soldiers.

But there were Russian casualties, especially among Wagner’s troops Huge and the more confident Ukrainian commanders insist that the Russians have little rope left. “Russia is attacking with its dying breath,” said Olexander, the company commander.

Also Ukrainian victims they have been incessant and there’s a shortage of volunteers in frontline spots, Duke said. In November he received an urgent order to “assemble all the people of our unit, cooks, drivers, press officer, photographerall the stafftake your rifles and go to the Bakhmut area”.

By the end of February, 50% of the men had been wounded, he said, and some were depressed and apathetic.

The data on Ukrainian casualties is not publicly available, but it is there increasing signs of stress for losses and exhaustion in many units.

“We’re tired,” exclaimed an army mechanic, Yaroslav, as he emerged from a small-town bar one evening last week. “You must know the truth. They are killing us“.