Ukraine has drawn a line on the earth and that line is called Bakhmut.
It is a city that few consider strategically important, but where tens of thousands have died fighting for it.
The fight for control of Bakhmut began more than seven months ago and has become the battle more long from the war Until now.
Two Ukrainian army brigades defending the city’s southern flank gave the BBC access to their positions last week as fierce fighting continued in and around Bakhmut.
The soldiers have spent months facing off against both regular Russian army forces and prisoners recruited by the Wagner Group, a private army of mercenaries, who have invaded their trenches en masse.
Ukrainian troops claim that Russian casualties far exceed their ownbut they admit that the enemy is deploying new techniques to try to take over the city and its surrounding countryside.
The Ukrainian forces are outgunned and outnumbered by the Russians, but on a limestone slope to the south, stands an anti-tank group from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.
The 3Storm (3rd Storm), as it is known, is inflexible. Its members have dug deep trenches in the earth. The wooden struts supporting the roof of these trenches shudder when Russian artillery lands nearby, a shudder that sends field mice scurrying along the wooden planks.
Also in one corner is an old-fashioned field telephone; are conditions that the grandparents of these soldiers would recognize immediately.
a slaughterhouse
“They can’t get to where we are, (because) we have a view of up to a kilometer in all directions,” explains a bearded 26-year-old soldier known as “Dwarf,” pointing out the Russian positions.
“We can hit the enemy with everything we have,” he adds.
Neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians release official casualty figures for Bakhmut or the rest of Ukraine, but the mostly abandoned city has become a slaughterhouse.
After a week of fighting, Dwarf’s unit encountered prisoners recruited by Russia’s Wagner Group.
“We had battles every two hours,” he says. “I suppose that asingle unit deleteaba to 50 people per day”.
Dwarf points out that these numbers have been confirmed by aerial reconnaissance.
“The (Russian vehicle) arrives, then 50 bodies come out, a day goes by, and 50 bodies come out again,” he explains.
The soldier claims that his unit has lost a fraction of that number.
7 Russian casualties for every Ukrainian death
Officially, Ukraine estimates that for every one of its soldiers killed, Russia loses seven.
Earlier this week, Russia said it had killed more than 220 Ukrainian military in a 24 hour period in the battle for Bakhmut.
None of these numbers can be independently verified.
In an interview with the American newspaper Wall Street Journaltwo captured Wagner Group recruits claimed that, before being sent to the front lines, they received little training beyond learning to crawl through the woods in the dark.
After six months of service at the front, they are released, assuming they survived.
Conditions along the nearly 1,000km-long eastern front have begun to change.
The chalky hilltop hideout where the 3Storm Brigade is located feels like dry, stable land when compared to the surrounding territory.
This year’s premature spring has turned the hard winter soil into a muddy mush, which can be an advantage for the defending army.
To get there, we had to follow a group of Ukrainian soldiers on foot. I had barely taken a couple of steps when my boots were covered in thick mud.
A battlefield ambulance hurtles forward at full speed, its wheels plowing through the ground and spraying puddles of mud as it struggles to stay afloat.
ghost towns
The towns that surround us (the location cannot be revealed), or what is left of them, are ruined.
Handwritten signs, mostly in Russian, are seen on some doors announcing “There are people living here,” which is both a plea and a simple message.
But the streets are completely emptyapart from some abandoned dogs that roam among the ruins of farms and destroyed houses.
For the past two months, Russian forces have been steadily advancing, trying to encircle the city.
The commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, General Oleksandr Syrsky, says that his forces will continue to resist.
“Each day of constant resistance we gain valuable time to reduce the enemy’s offensive capabilities,” he explains, as he sends more reinforcements into the area.
no alternative
But it’s not just the Russians who have fallen in the Battle of Bakhmut. Ukrainians are dying too, in increasing numbers.
On a hillside, a group of soldiers have gathered around a gun position. I ask Dwarf, given that the Ukraine is losing soldiers to untrained Russian convicts, whether defending this desolate city surrounded by the enemy makes sense.
He replies: “I wondered myself if we should continue to defend Bakhmut. On the one hand, what is happening here now is horrible. There are no words to describe it. But the alternative is that we abandon Bakhmut and move to another settlement.”
“What is the difference between defending Bakhmut or any other town?” he continues.
His comrade, a strongly built man with a thick dark beard known as “Holm,” agrees.
“This is not a strategic issue for us. We are ordinary soldiers. But this is our land. We could retreat to Chasiv Yar, and then from Chasiv Yar to Slovyansk, and then we retreat to Kyiv,” he notes.
“May it take a year or two, four, five, but we have to fight for every piece of our land.”
“They are getting smarter”
The men have been fighting for over a year and claim the Russians are evolving.
“They are learning, they are getting smarter and that it really scares meDwarf says.
“They send a group: five idiots released from prison. They shoot at them, but then the enemy sees where you are, he advances and surrounds you from behind.
Holm says that Russia is now using drones armed with grenades more effectively. “We used to drop them and scare them,” he explains. “Now they are dropping grenades with drones on our positions.”
Before the war, Dwarf was a young man who worked outdoors. He used to take young people on excursions through the Carpathian Mountains, in the far west of the country.
But now, on the eastern front in Ukraine, that is a distant memory.
He has been in many battles since then, but the horror of Bakhmut haunts him today.
When I ask him about the Wagner Group convict army, he pauses in thought, then says, “I’ll be honest. They have genius. They use cruel, immoral, but effective tactics. It has worked. And it’s working on Bakhmut.”
Days later, I return to the same area, crammed with four others into a Soviet-era UAZ jeep.
The steering wheel has the BMW logo – a joke, according to the driver, Oleg.
A drone war
The Ukrainian says little as he clings to the wheel, looking extremely intent as he navigates the hills and dung banks.
The automatic shots heard in front of us indicate that we are closing in on the 28th Mechanized Brigade, which directly confronts the Russians.
The landscape of war changes in just an instant: the men hide in a small forest, behind trees smashed and split by Russian fire.
In a month, the wood will offer them shelter. But now, their bare branches expose them to surveillance drones. Nearby there is an exchange of shots and are heard russian shells that fall about 500m away.
But Borys, a 48-year-old former architect who now serves as captain, is calm.
“Today’s war is a drone war,” he explains. “But we can walk freely, because there is wind and rain and the drones are carried away by the wind. If the weather today were more stable, both our drones and our enemy’s drones would be hovering over us.”
On the way back, Oleg suddenly stops the car. In front of us there is a drone lying on the ground which has strayed from its course. They quickly remove the battery before bringing it inside; It turns out to be a Ukrainian drone.
But today’s war is not much different from that of the past.
Two nights earlier, the 28th brigade was attacked by Russian tanks and infantry.
In a position under an underground wooden structure, freezing rain drips through the ceiling onto the dirt floor, and there, looking out over the bare landscape, is a belt-fed Maxim machine gun on sturdy steel wheels. iron.
“It only works when there’s a massive attack… that’s where it really works,” explains Borys. “So the we use every week“.
And this is how the battle for Bakhmut is fought, as winter turns to spring in 21st century Europe. But a 19th century weapon still devastates dozens of men in the thick black earth of the Ukraine.
Now you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss out on our best content.
- Do you already know our YouTube channel? Subscribe!