Welcome to Bakhmut: the new Passchendaele
Horrors of World War I echoed in Ukraine as trench combat and shelling take toll
Nothing but shattered trees and mud are visible from the trench for as far as the eye can see. Inside the fortifications themselves, filthy troops wade through slicks of freezing mud, waiting for the next artillery barrage.
The photos shared by Ukrainian forces resemble the horrors of Passchendaele or other World War I battles from more than a century ago.
Instead they show conditions in the 2022 battle for the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut which has become an epicentre for fighting in the ninemonth-old war.
Julius Terekhov, spokesman for a Ukrainian unit in Bakhmut, said: “It’s like the pictures show. It’s really like the first World War. Because of the intense shelling, the trees have been cut down.”
The fighting had been so intense that some trenches had changed hands several times in the course of a week, he said, adding the Russian commanders appeared to hold their men in contempt, while the Wagner forces considered themselves above the rest of their Russian comrades. Fields had in some places been littered with Russian dead after attacks.
The town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region has become a byword for heavy shelling and relentless attacks as Russian military commanders, desperate for a symbolic victory, have launched assault after assault trying to dislodge the Ukrainian defenders.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that of all his forces’ battles, the “most difficult” is in Bakhmut.
Ukrainian military sources estimate that on some days hundreds of Russian soldiers have been killed trying to overrun their positions around their town.
The battle mixes early 20thcentury warfare with the latest technology.
While troops dig into trenches, above them artillery spotters on both sides use drones to improve their aim or drop grenades.
Ukrainian forces accuse the Russians of using phosphorous incendiary munitions and thermobaric vacuum bombs.
The fighting has also been characterised by a Russian disregard for their own troops, said Serhii Cherevatyl, spokesman for the Ukraine military’s eastern front. Russian commanders even referred to their soldiers as “single use”, as they threw them into hopeless attacks on
what he called a “conveyor belt of death”.
“They are sending them like meat to find out where our firing positions are,” he said. “When the first wave is dead and the Ukrainian forces have used up their ammunition, then they attack again.”
He estimated Russian losses to be
between 100 and 300 each day in the area. The Daily Telegraph could not independently verify the figures.
Ukraine’s forces are also thought to be suffering significant casualties.
With many of the Russian military’s most elite units badly mauled in fighting around Kyiv, the task of taking Bakhmut has fallen to a mix of separatist militias, mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group and newly mobilised reservists.
Analysts believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is desperate for a victory after a string of battlefield reverses and Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Wagner, is throwing everything he can at the town. Bakhmut’s pre-war population of about 72,000 has fallen by as much as 80 or 90 per cent and those who remain spend much of their time sheltering in basements. For all Prigozhin’s efforts, the front line has moved little.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, has said his recent comments may suggest he is trying to temper expectations for his offensive. Prigozhin recently said Wagner Group formations were not trying to take Bakhmut, but instead to wear down Ukrainian forces.
The arrival of early winter has partly slowed the pace of fighting, but this weekend Ukrainian forces still reported 190 shell strikes and as many as 50 firefights on a single day.
Overall, the cold season is expected to favour Ukrainian forces, who are better equipped and more disciplined.