Soledar is already in the hands of the Wagner mercenary group. The Russians are now trying to focus the Ukrainians’ attention on Bakhmut in order to strike elsewhere.
In Bakhmut, just behind the railway bridge, there is a small square at the point where Tchaikovsky Street turns into Horbatov Street and then intersects with Cosmonauts Street. Not far from the site, the Russians severely damaged a power line, just like in hundreds of other towns and villages that have been plagued by artillery shelling by Putin’s soldiers.
It once was a safe area which was not tormented by a constant artillery fire. Perhaps this is why the electricians decided to fix what had been damaged by Wagner fighters from Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private military company, who were stationed about 2 km away. Witnessing their actions felt like a mix of surrealism and voyeurism: in a setting straight out of the apocalypse, two men standing on a platform were trying to sort out a tangle of cables, as if that made any sense at all. After all, Bakhmut has been deprived of electricity, water and heating for many weeks. People chop down trees that are still standing to burn firewood in their unlit homes. They source water straight from puddles because humanitarian aid does not reach them on a daily basis. “We live like animals” one resident tells our daily newspaper reporter. So are the Ukrainian soldiers, who for several weeks have been erecting a system of trenches and fortifications around the town, to help them hide in the mud from artillery fire.
– When it rains more heavily, used sanitary pads and other filth flow into our trenches located below the landfill. As if simply trying to survive in the mud was still not challenging enough – Yuriy Lutsenko, former head of the Ministry of Interior, Prosecutor General and one of the main protagonists of the Orange Revolution in 2004, tells our newspaper reporter. Yuriy is currently serving in Bakhmut. He is an officer in the rank of senior lieutenant. He tells us we’re lucky because the day is pretty quiet. During our conversation, every now and then he throws in some Polish phrases. He is happy to talk to MPs from Poland, who came to Bakhmut as the first politicians from the West, immediately after Volodymyr Zelensky and Vitali Klitschko.
Buses with cannon fodder
Lutsenko tells us about the Russians. Every morning, he says, fresh recruits from the latest wave of mobilisation – adolescent youths plucked from the sunken villages and towns are brought to Bakhmut by buses. The regime puts these boys into a meat grinder. And grinds them up. Of every 20 young soldiers sent to the front line, only a few return unhurt. Prigozhin’s Wagner fighters start doing their job at dusk. Again, there is a splitting of roles as well, as in a well-directed play. “First to go to the battle are the zeks – (i.e. criminals who gain their freedom for six months’ service in the Wagner Group – editor’s note). They trample straight over the corpses of fresh recruits. They are tasked with moving the front line a few metres forward. Professional storm troopers from the Wagner Group attempt to force their way into our trenches at a later stage,” says Lutsenko.
One of the soldiers accompanying Lutsenko tells us about the prevailing atmosphere in the city. “Recently someone tipped off the enemy about our military positions. They tried to target us and we were finally shelled,” he recalls and adds: “Not everybody here loves Ukraine”.
His military unit uses T-72 tanks to attack the Russians. These are not tanks that were handed over by Poland, nor Ukrainian tanks, but those that were abandoned by the Russians themselves during their chaotic evacuation from Kharkiv in September last year. The Ukrainians are using these tanks in the Donbass region as mobile artillery sets.
The drone warfare
At a military base located in one of the surrounding towns, on a screen, soldiers show the results of the reconnaissance they are carrying out in Soledar, located a few kilometres from Bakhmut. “The Ministry of Defence reports that our troops are still holding their positions there. Can you see any soldiers anywhere? Well, I cannot,” he says. On the screen, Soledar looks like an ocean of rubble. Clouds of smoke rise up here and there. The area is very similar to the village of Sukha Kamianka located on the border of Donetsk and Kharkiv regions. The village was razed to the ground before the military offensive in September. No resident has returned there to this day.
“Until recently, Bakhmut was regarded as a good place to live out through the winter. However, as Wagner fighters failed to capture the city, instead they decided to destroy it,” says one of the soldiers. “Besides, they want to tie up our military forces here and probably strike elsewhere,” he adds.
According to information obtained on the spot, in addition to Soledar, the Russians also entered Klyschiivka, located further south. Thus, they gained the opportunity to shell the access road to Bakhmut, from the side of Kostyantynivka, the only route by which supplies could be delivered to the city. Driving the last 5 km before the monument where the Soviet fighter plane was placed is a risky crossing today. “If you hear gunfire, just speed up your car and drive ahead without thinking twice,” Svyatoslav Boyko, who used to be lead singer of the band named Shyrokyi Lan before the war broke out, tells us.
He tells us about the drones used by his squad to attack the Russians. “We hook up various explosives under these drones. Sometimes it is a shaped charge that can be used to destroy armoured vehicles. We connect these loads with clamps printed on 3D printers. We launch two drones into the air. One does the reconnaissance and the other does the strike. Around 40 Russians are killed in this way daily,” he says. Unfortunately, in recent times similar tactics under Bakhmut have also been deployed by Wagner fighters, who have also been given equipment to jam Ukrainian UAVs. Boyko shows on the screen how the image transmission from the device over Soledar snaps.
“A breakthrough battlefield rush”
According to the deputy governor of the Kharkiv region, Roman Semenucha, since the beginning of the military mobilisation, the Russians have doubled their forces on the entire eastern and southern front lines, covering parts of Donbass and Zaporizhzhia.
“We expect that at the turn of winter and spring our enemies may be able to launch up to 800,000 troops on the front line. In total, we estimate their mobilisation capacity to be 1.5 million,” he tells our newspaper reporter. “We expect the worst. We need weapons and ammunition,” he adds. Oleksandr Honcharenko, the mayor of Kramatorsk, a town located less than 60 km from Bakhmut repeats basically the same words. “We appreciate Poland’s generosity and commitment to helping us. But let’s be honest, 10 leopard tanks will not really change the situation on the battlefront. We need at least 300 of them to sway the balance of victory,” he says.
The Ukrainians are doing much to slow down the process of the Russians’ preparations for the military catch-up. They are buying time. They are shelling Belgorod, a city on the other side of the border north of Kharkiv, where an important railway junction is located, re-arm the Donbas region and build fortifications. At the same time, the Russians are trying to pull the Ukrainians into their game in order to exhaust their supply of ammunition and troops. In the Bakhmut region, this type of task is carried out by Prigozhin and his Wagner fighters. At the same time, this businessman is creating a legend around himself. He travels to the Bakhmut area and records appeals to Volodymyr Zelensky while standing a few kilometres from the square on The Cosmonauts Street. While his soldiers shell the town, he goes on tirades about their bravery, calling on the Ukrainian president to come to the scene and work out whose property it is. When it comes to the use of social media, Prigozhin is becoming more and more of a mastermind. He is recognizable by many people, but he is also the lure that captures the attention of Ukrainians. In the meantime, the actual offensive may start in a completely different location.
Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council Oleksiy Danilov says preparations are underway for a “breakthrough battlefield rush”. ”The mobilisation of recruits and personnel changes in the Russian command point to the likelihood of another large-scale offensive in February or March,” he has recently said. “He (i.e. Putin – editor’s remark) has already exploited the strength of Kadyrov’s Chechen troops and the Wagner Group, and now it is time for the regular Russian army,” he added.
As to where the Russians might actually strike from – whether it will be from the Donbass or Belarus – I asked a senior civil servant in the Kharkiv region. However, he did not give me a conclusive answer. Instead, he made it clear that he feared being hit from both directions. To distract attention, there might be a strike from the north and from the east to enter deeper into the Donbas. “We haven’t even reached the halfway point of this war yet,” he said. He added that Russia had the resources to carry it on for many more months to come. Even if it meant capturing only completely ruined cities such as Soledar or Bakhmut. “For them, even this would make a profit,” he added.
From Bakhmut to Kharkiv after nightfall you have to go via Izium. There is no electricity or running water in this town either. However, a hairdressing studio was still open, perhaps to make those who still stayed in the town feel more dignified. A solitary light shone in the darkness, powered by a generator. Behind the glass one could see the outline of a person doing a haircut, which was even more surreal than the cable repair works in Bakhmut. In both cases, these types of occupations primarily had a dignity purpose. They allowed people to safeguard the remnants of their humanity and retain a sense that things were “normal”.
Last week Bakhmut was visited by MEPs: Adam Szłapka, Piotr Borys, Witold Zembaczyński, Paweł Krutul and Hanna Gil-Piątek. Acting in cooperation with the Open Dialogue Foundation and Marcin Mycielski, they provided the military unit stationed there with, amongst other things, 13 UAVs which are used by Svyatoslav Boyko’s soldiers.
Source: gazetaprawna.pl
