The latest struggle for Bakhmut is turning into one of the bloodiest battles of the war
places in eastern Europe, Bakhmut bears the scars of history. In the 18th century Cossack rebels seized the town and held it for three years. In 1919 it was contested in the Russian civil war. In 1942 Nazis killed 3,000 Jews in Artyomovsk, as the town was then known. And it slipped briefly into the hands of separatists when Russia fomented a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, before being recaptured.
The offensive has been led by the Wagner Group, a mercenary outfit, and supported by air power, copious artillery and waves of hapless infantry, reinforced in recent weeks by troops withdrawn from Kherson and by newly mobilised men. The regular army fights during the day. Wagner units, better funded and equipped with the latest tanks, come out at night. Elite airborne forces have joined in. For all that, the front lines have hardly budged.
On December 4th Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern group of military forces, claimed that 50-100 Russian soldiers were dying every day in the battle, with about the same number wounded. Ukrainian forces in the area face similarly grim conditions. Images published by a Ukrainian soldier show trenches filled with thick ankle-deep mud and trees defoliated by shelling, lending the battle the feel of the first world war.
As winter approaches, with boggy ground and sub-zero temperatures increasingly common, fighting is likely to slow down. Ukrainian counter-attacks around Bakhmut in recent days have fizzled out. “We’re seeing a kind of a reduced tempo,” noted Avril Haines, America’s director of national intelligence, on December 3rd. At the same time, the air war is hotting up.
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