Drone footage shows scale of Bakhmut’s destruction
BAKHMUT, UKRAINE — Amid the smoking ruins, a lone dog pads in the snow, surely unaware that death rains down regularly from the skies on the remnants of this Ukrainian city that Russia is pounding into rubble.
But for now Bakhmut stands — growing as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance with each additional day that its defenders hold out against Russia’s relentless shelling.
New v ideo footage of Bakhmut shot from the air with a drone for The Asso- ciated Press shows how the longest battle of the yearlong Russian invasion has turned the city of salt and gypsum mines in eastern Ukraine into a ghost town.
The footage — shot Feb. 13 — shows no people. But they are still there — some- where, out of sight, in base- ments and defensive strong- holds, trying to survive. Of the prewar population of 80,000, a few thousand residents have refused or been unable to evacuate. The size of the garrison that Ukraine has stationed in the city is kept secret.
Tire tracks on the roads and footprints on the paths covered with snow speak to a continued human presence. In one shot, a car drives swiftly away in the distance. Graffiti spray-painted on the charred, pockmarked outer walls of a blown-out storefront also show people are or were here.
A top Ukrainian intelligence official this week lik- ened the fight for Bakhmut to Ukraine’s dogged defense of Mariupol earlier in the war, which tied up Russian forces for months, prevent- ing the Kremlin from deploy- ing them elsewhere.
From the air, the scale of destruction becomes plain to see. Entire rows of apartment buildings have been gutted, just the outer walls left standing and the roofs
and interior floors gone, exposing the ruins’ innards to the snow and winter frost — and the drone’s prying eye.
Like a caver descending into a chasm, the drone drops slowly into one of the blown-out hulks. It peers into a kitchen, a once-in- timate family place now exposed because one of its outer walls has been torn away. There is still a strainer in the sink and plates on the drying rack above, as though someone still lives there. But the undisturbed dust- ing of snow on the cloth-covered table suggests they are long gone.
In other developments Thursday:
■ The Moldovan govern- ment appealed for calm and urged the public to follow
only “official and credible” sources of news after Russia alleged Ukraine is planning an “armed provocation” in Moldova’s Moscow-backed breakaway region of Transnistria. Shortly before the Russian Defense M inistry’s claim, an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, Anton Herashchenko, said Ukraine and NATO could together return Transnistria to Moldova within 24 hours.
Moscow alleged, without presenting any evidence, that Ukrainian soldiers disguised as Russian troops planned to fake an attack from Transnistria, thereby providing a pretext for an invasion of the territory.
■ Russian President Vlad
imir Putin gave another signal he is digging in for a protracted war, saying his government will prioritize strengthening Russia’s defense capabilities. Speaking on Defender of the Fatherland Day, a public holiday, he announced the deployment of the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile system and the delivery of a massive supply of Zircon sea-launched hypersonic missiles to Russian forces. He added that three Borei-class nuclear submarines would be added to the fleet in the coming years.