“I don’t even know, to be honest, what will happen in a week or two,” Bandit said. “A lot of people are dying here, a lot.”
For months, Ukraine and Russia have flooded Bakhmut with reinforcements and carted away thousands of dead and wounded in what has become the longest, bloodiest battle of the war. Now, after eight months of Ukraine steadily ceding territory, the fight is closing in on just a few square miles of the city’s west.
As the vice tightens — with Russians assaulting from the north, east and south — Kyiv is determined to draw the fight out as long as possible, hoping to deplete its enemy ahead of what is expected to be a high-stakes offensive aimed at dislodging Russian forces from a large swath of occupied territory.
In an effort to speed up its advance, Russia has begun destroying entire apartment blocks used by Ukraine as defensive positions. The city is flattened in many places and most of its residents prewar population of about 70,000 have fled.
“They are simply blowing up nine-story buildings,” Bandit said. A powerful aerial bomb, he said, “was dropped on the four-story buildings next to ours — there was nothing left of it. If it had landed on our building, we wouldn’t be here either.”
Russian advances have also closed in on Ukraine’s supply roads to western Bakhmut. Moscow claimed to have taken control of a few hundred yards of one road on Friday, but Ukraine says it still can ferry soldiers and supplies in and out as needed.
The current front line in the west runs south of the main train station that Ukraine has been using as high ground, but Russian forces have pushed past the railroad tracks to the northwest and southwest edges.
The Wagner mercenary group has largely led Russia’s fight for Bakhmut and its leader, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, has repeatedly claimed his forces were on the verge of taking the city. Prigozhin personally broadcast videos marking Wagner advances after pushing into city center, including one in which his fighters placing a flag on a World War II liberation monument and another from the city’s main administration building last month.
Since the video from the administration building was released earlier this month, Russian forces have advanced less than a mile farther into the city center.
A damp basement on the city’s edge has been transformed into a Ukrainian command center. Computer screens and a tablet set up on a simple table toggled between half a dozen drone feeds showing Russian positions about three miles away.
A lieutenant with the call sign “Plai” tracked a small Russian infantry unit moving across a courtyard between buildings.
“We’re looking for movement, any kind of movement,” he said as the feed zoomed in on a shattered building and coordinates were radioed to a nearby howitzer.
The wider shots showed dozens of homes shredded by months of artillery fire. “The whole city looks like this,” Plai said. He said he blames Russia for the majority of the destruction, but also accepts Ukraine has played a role given that both sides have relied on heavy artillery since the battle began.
“We feel responsible, but we also understand that we will be rebuilding Bakhmut after this is over,” he said.
Russians, in turn believe that they will be the ones to reconstruct Bakhmut, which they call Artyomovsk, its Soviet-Russian name, just as they are now rebuilding occupied Mariupol, a port city in Donetsk that was largely destroyed during a Russian siege last spring.
In the Ukrainians’ basement command center, one drone feed flashed a warning “GPS signal weak,” then “aircraft signal interference” before the image began to spin. “It’s falling,” Plai said as the screen became garbled and then went dark. “It got too close to the jammers.”
Plai said the fight for Bakhmut has intensified over the past…
Read More: In Bakhmut, Ukrainian troops cling to western edge of a destroyed city