Body camera footage shows the moment Ukrainian soldiers charge forward in an assault across no man’s land, pinning down enemies before breaking through a position near Bakhmut.
Gunfire can be heard as members of the 24th Assault Battalion Aidar move across open terrain, suppressing enemy troops with a beam of automatic fire as they push for cover.
The men take a break and pile up against a wall as another soldier tries to breach one of the buildings.
The battalion is on the front line of the city fighting for control of the region, the longest running and bloodiest battle of the invasion of Moscow.
Ukraine said today that the Russian Wagner mercenary group, which claimed to be leading Moscow’s assault on the industrial city, entered the industrial city.
“Wagner assault units are advancing from different directions, trying to break through our troops’ defensive positions and moving towards the center of the city,” the Ukrainian army said at a morning briefing. “In fierce battles, our defenders inflict significant casualties on the enemy.”
Russia suffered its deadliest day of the war over the weekend with 1,090 claimed to have died on Saturday amid the desperate push for control of the city.
Ukrainian forces use suppressive fire to advance on a damaged house near Bakhmut
The squad goes to the building and looks around to see damaged houses in the city
Soldiers pile up outside the building and prepare to break through and enter the position
In scenes that have been described describing infantry as “worse than Stalingrad,” Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin also acknowledged that his troops encountered determined resistance.
“The situation in Bakhmut is difficult, very difficult. The enemy is fighting for every yard,” Prigozhin said in a social media post.
He added: ‘The closer we get to the city center, the more difficult the battles become and the more artillery there is…Ukrainians throw endless reserves (into the fight)’.
Ukraine has said its strategy with Bakhmut’s defense is to reduce Russia’s ability to launch a new offensive in the coming months and buy time to prepare its attempt to recapture territory.
Russian “human wave”-style attacks have rapidly depleted the armed forces in recent months.
Russia is reported to have lost approximately 159,800 personnel, 3,474 tanks and 6,774 armored fighting vehicles since the start of the war, as of March 13, 2023.
Last week, elite armored divisions allegedly rioted, charged with another suicidal attack in Vuhledar, also in Donetsk.
Ukraine’s defenders last week claimed Russia’s best units were trapped in Bakhmut and said they intended to hold out despite NATO’s warnings that the city could fall within days.
Russia’s Wagner Group reportedly succeeded in opening recruiting centers to continue advance on Bakhmut intelligence that Prigozhin has probably lost access to recruitment from Russian prisons due to his ongoing clashes with the Russian Defense Ministry.
Russian forces have been conducting strike operations against the city of Bakhmut since August 2022.
In December, Zelensky reported that Russian shelling had turned the city into “burnt ruins.”
The slow war of attrition pushed both sides into murky, soggy trenches during the winter, hammered by artillery and caught in close quarter battle (CQB) fighting.
Kiev has warned that the fall of the city would give Russian troops a clear path into eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claimed to annex last year.
Victory for Putin would also be a symbolic one, having been largely driven back from Ukraine in the early months of the war.
In mid-January, Russian troops celebrated the capture of the town of Soledar in northern Bakhmut.
The Ukrainian withdrawal at the end of January, deemed necessary to ‘preserve our personnel’, is pushing Russian troops further west.
The Russian victory over Soledar came at the cost of “colossal resources in lives and equipment,” said army spokesman Colonel Sergei Cherevaty.
Pictured: A map showing the rough position of troops around the besieged city of Bakhmut. Russian troops approach from the north, east and south, leaving Ukraine’s defenders with only one route (west) to escape – across a muddy swamp. As Russian troops move in, the window to retreat closes, but Ukraine is determined to continue defending the symbolic city
Ukrainian soldier makes the victory sign as he heads for Bakhmut, March 11
A Ukrainian soldier watches from a BMP-2 approaching the city of Bakhmut, March 11
A volunteer prepares ammunition to fire on Russian positions near Bakhmut on March 11
A soldier of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army uses his mobile phone near the frontline on Saturday 11
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now more than a year old, will nearly double Europe’s arms imports by 2022, driven by massive shipments to Kiev, which has become the world’s third-largest arms destination, researchers said Monday.
“The invasion has really led to a significant increase in the demand for weapons in Europe, which will have even more effect and most likely lead to more arms imports by European states,” said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. (SIPRI). ), told AFP.
The Russian attack has had “devastating” consequences for children in residential institutions, with thousands transferred to occupied territories or to Russia, Human Rights Watch also said Monday.
“This brutal war has clearly demonstrated the need to end the dangers children face in institutions,” said Bill Van Esveld, deputy director of children’s rights at the New York-based organization.
At least several thousand children have been transferred to Russia or occupied territories, according to the report.
