Bakhmut, a "fortress" symbol
"The vast majority of the soldiers in our brigade are people who came by themselves with flames in their eyes," says Bohdan, a smiling 27-year-old soldier. Before being sent to the Bakhmut area, the unit distinguished itself in the counter-offensive of September 2022, which made it possible to liberate the occupied territories of the Kharkiv region.
On the other hand, the man is less optimistic about the morale of those who have been fighting since the beginning of the invasion of the country, "those who have not had a holiday for a year". He does not specify the number of wounded and dead within the formation but ends by saying that "the hardest thing is when you see that there are only two people left in your unit, you and another".
As the Kremlin's army and mercenaries from the private Wagner militia nibbled away at swathes of devastated villages, with heavy casualties, in their attempt to encircle Bakhmut, a "fortress" town that has come to symbolise Ukrainian resistance, NATO's Secretary General said he was pessimistic about the battle's outcome. "We cannot exclude that Bakhmut will finally fall in the next few days," Jens Stoltenberg said on the sidelines of a meeting of European defence ministers in Stockholm on Wednesday.
Two days earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had announced that he had asked his staff to "find the appropriate forces to help the guys in Bakhmut". On Thursday 9, the commander of Ukraine's ground forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement that each additional day of defence of the city "buys time to prepare our reserves and future offensive operations".
For Oleh, the platoon commander, the strategic value of one of the bloodiest battles since the beginning of the conflict is not in doubt: 'The general staff says that Bakhmut allows us to kill a lot of Russians,' he explains. That's why we're staying for now. For one Ukrainian death, we kill seven Russians. This battle is already having a huge impact on [the enemy's] morale.
Sitting on the bonnet of a car at a crossroads in the town of Kostiantynivka, a soldier, also named Vitali, assures us that the situation in his brigade in Bakhmut is "tough, but under control". The 24-year-old, who enlisted in 2017, has been fighting on one of the most violent fronts in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass, for several weeks now, in order to repel the advances of Russian forces.
"If I don't do it, who will?
From his position in the trenches, armed with a rocket launcher, Vitali's job is to cover the assault groups of his brigade as they attack enemy forces. The man says morale is high. "Everyone answers one simple question: "If I don't do it, who will?
Vitali repeats quietly: "We are holding our positions," he says, without commenting on the situation of other brigades deployed in other parts of the city and its surroundings. "For the others, I don't know.
The soldiers of the 80th brigade even managed to repel an attack by Russian forces on Bakhmut's last remaining Ukrainian-held supply road, a vital artery for the city's defence. When the soldiers arrived a few weeks earlier, the Russians "were already almost on the road," says Serhiy, 24, a former sniper and member of an assault group. "We pushed them back 2.5 kilometres, almost 3 kilometres, so they tried to move on. But they failed because we were still there.
The 24-year-old, who has a "Slava Ukraini" ("Glory to Ukraine") tattoo on his neck, is part of the assault groups that charge into enemy positions. We are more aggressive," the man says simply. If the mission is to storm a certain area, we storm the first trench and then we continue.
The young man, like all the others, laughs at the tactics of the Russian forces. "It's like sending meat," Vitali says. According to Taras, the brigade's press officer, "the Russians first send a first wave of inexperienced soldiers, often newly mobilised, so that we shoot at them and they spot us. Then they send waves of more experienced soldiers. When these arrive, "we let them get close and then we open fire," explains Serhiy. They don't advance and they stay in their positions with their dead. The next day they do the same thing.
Mykola and Andriy, two guys who are also part of an assault group, talk with some disgust about the "misery" of the Russian forces opposite. A shell falls near one of their trenches," says Mykola, "four Russians jump in to protect themselves and two run away. Time passes, they come back to the same trench and if there is someone dead in it, they pull him out and throw him away. The bodies are there in the open and they walk around. It takes a lot of nerve to live like that, surrounded by dead bodies. They don't have any options, they only have one way, straight ahead.
