Ukrainian Troops In the Bakhmut Trenches Recognize Their Role's Purpose

The fighting has been brutal, the Russian attacks relentless. But the troops holding the lines at Bakhmut understand they are their to bleed out the Russians and help wear down their enemy for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. JL 

James Marson reports in the Wall Street Journal:

The task for the Ukrainians on the front line was to hold their positions. They mostly hid from artillery fire in dugouts, praying there wouldn’t be a direct hit. They had periodically to overcome their fear and emerge from the bunkers to shoot in the direction of the advancing enemy infantry, to keep them at bay. By staying and fighting for each block and field they could grind down the Russian forces. By bogging down the battle here, they would also be able to buy time to prepare for a bigger offensive of their own elsewhere. a coordinated defensive system including sniper and machine-gun positions enabled them to hold off the attackers and killed (thousands) of Russians

For weeks, Ukraine’s Honor Company held back Russian forces on the road to Bakhmut.

The two sides traded fire with artillery, machine guns and rifles in trenches and fields that recalled scenes from the destroyed landscapes of northern France and Belgium during World War I. The Ukrainians staked out front-line positions in dugouts along a line of trees, under constant threat from artillery assaults. Hundreds of Russian rounds sliced through tree trunks and left nearby fields covered in craters.

Honor Company soldiers would spend only a few hours at a time on the front line to safeguard their mental and physical well-being. Winter rain and snow turned the trench system into a muddy bog. Those heading to forward positions scampered in ones and twos to avoid being targeted.

The positions were critical to Ukraine’s efforts to keep open the supply line to its besieged forces in Bakhmut, the eastern city that has been Moscow’s main target in recent months. Then, on April 9, the Russians launched a fresh effort to overwhelm Honor Company’s positions.

Two soldiers from the unit captured footage of the fighting on cameras attached to their helmets, which the Ukrainian military shared with The Wall Street Journal. This article is based on the footage and interviews with Honor Company members.

On that day, First Lt. Oleksandr Yabchanka, a 42-year-old pediatrician with Honor Company, was walking toward a dugout on the front line when he saw a blast and a plume of smoke up ahead.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said the lieutenant, known to fellow soldiers simply as Yabchanka. 

The dugout, where other company members were hunkered down, had been hit. It was their most advanced position along the line of trees that juts north from the O-0506 road into Bakhmut.

The task for the Ukrainians on the front line was to hold their positions. They mostly hid from artillery fire in dugouts, praying there wouldn’t be a direct hit. They had to periodically overcome their fear and emerge from the bunkers to shoot in the direction of the advancing enemy infantry, to keep them at bay. Yabchanka arrived to a scene of destruction. The explosion had come from a 120mm mortar bomb that had hit the dugout.

“Lyokha, are you OK?” Yabchanka called out. Lyokha gave a thumbs-up. 

The gesture calmed the other men in the bunker, Yabchanka said—but the assault was about to escalate.

Buying time

Honor Company arrived in early March to the western outskirts of Bakhmut, a once-prosperous city of some 70,000. It is now mostly in ruins. By the end of February, Russian forces had advanced around Bakhmut’s northern and southern edges and were threatening to cut off Ukrainian troops by slicing their two main supply roads.

There is little strategic value to the city. But the Ukrainians decided to stick it out instead of withdrawing and dispatched reinforcements to defend the roads. Their calculation was that by staying and fighting for each block and field they could grind down the Russian forces. By bogging down the battle here, they would also be able to buy time to prepare for a bigger offensive of their own elsewhere.

Russian forces still haven’t managed to cut off Bakhmut, but have seized most of the city with brutal street-to-street fighting that has hemmed Ukrainian soldiers into a few blocks in the west. Wagner, the paramilitary group made up largely of convicted criminals, has led Russian assaults on the city. The White House estimated last week that about half the 20,000 Russian troops killed in Ukraine since December were from Wagner.

Honor Company’s leader is 28-year-old Second Lt. Serhiy Filimonov, who founded a Ukrainian nationalist group that protested corruption and once starred as a gangster in an acclaimed Ukrainian film. When Russia invaded, he turned his movement, called Honor, into a fighting unit, which later became part of the 67th Mechanized Brigade.

They spent their first days in the Bakhmut area scouting out Russian positions using aerial drones. They dropped grenades from the drones and hammered the Russians with artillery, including mortars and howitzers. Then a squad of fighters moved up through the trees and flushed the Russians out almost to the top edge of the field by the road.

There, they set up a coordinated defensive system including sniper and machine-gun positions that enabled them to hold off the attackers and killed hundreds of Russians, said Lt. Filimonov. The company, with more than 100 soldiers, has suffered painful losses, mostly from artillery strikes. Five have died, with more lost to injuries.

The company fortified positions including a dugout known as Zhmur, or Stiff, because of the four Russian corpses that lay inside. They had been abandoned by their comrades from Wagner. The Ukrainians didn’t risk removing the bodies since any movement was likely to attract artillery fire, so the bodies remained in the bunker, a grim reminder of the war’s toll.

At his command post on April 9, Lt. Filimonov, known as Filya, was struggling to get a clear picture of what was happening at Zhmur—the dugout that had just been hit.

Video feeds from drones usually gave him an early warning that enemy forces were approaching, but weeks of bombardments had taken their toll on the battalion’s pilots. The more experienced ones were recovering from concussions. Their replacements were struggling to fly because Russian forces had deployed electronic-warfare systems to interfere with their signals. 

After changing the drone’s battery and sending it back to Zhmur, Filya saw through the video feed that two groups of Russians were already almost on top of his men.

Filya called to his troops over the radio. “The f—rs have got into our trench.”

Two groups comprising about eight Russians soldiers were advancing from the top edge of the trees. One set off down a trench in one field, seeking to flank around the Ukrainian positions. The other group closed in on Zhmur from the second field.

If the Ukrainians had left through the dugout’s main entrance, they would have been gunned down. Instead, Yabchanka, who previously headed the company’s medical service, and another Ukrainian soldier, a boxer in his mid-20s known as Tykhiy, popped out of a hole they had made in the dugout roof a few days earlier.

As the Russians sought desperately to crawl away, he fired at them in turn.

After Tykhiy saw that the Russians were killed or gravely wounded, he called to his colleagues in the dugout to come out. 

The company was firing from several positions now, including from machine guns and snipers.

Ukrainian artillery, meanwhile, began targeting a group of some 30 Russian troops that had gathered to the north of the trees, ready to advance.

Tykhiy ordered his fellow soldiers to take up firing positions, remain calm and conserve ammunition. In the trench running down the edge of the field about 30 yards in front of them, silhouettes of more Russian soldiers came into view.

Tykhiy asked Filya over the radio where the Russians were. Filya replied that a Russian to the left was still moving. The Ukrainians shot at them again. A badly wounded man can still throw a grenade. 

The Russians in the trench were now blocked by a small group of Ukrainian soldiers who had entered it from the south. That made them an easy target for the Ukrainians at Zhmur, who fired whenever they spotted movement.

At that moment, the battle for the dugout was won. 

In a moment of triumph, Tykhiy yelled, “This is our line of trees, f—rs!”

With artillery thudding all around, Filya ordered the soldiers back into the bunker, apart from Yabchanka, who kept firing into the trench.

Filya told him to stop. The Ukrainian soldiers in the trench were pushing northward to clear it.

Tykhiy commanded the men at Zhmur to take ammunition from the dead Ukrainian soldier in the dugout. They needed to prepare for the next assault.