Inside Ukraine's Battle To Retake Bakhmut

Some have been critical of the Ukrainians' continued focus on Bakhmut, but strategically, they have forced Russia to deploy divisions they could use in the south, weakening their defense by stretching Russian troop and ammunition resources. JL 

Ian Lovett and Nikita Nikolaienko report in the Wall Street Journal:

Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade seized Andriivka. Other Ukrainian units took the neighboring village. The victories gave Ukrainian forces control of high ground south of Bakhmut. Ukrainian President Zelensky has made retaking the city a key military goal. A victory in Bakhmut would provide allies with evidence Ukraine can win back lost ground. “The idea is to cut off supplies and movement in and out of the city. By conducting a secondary effort in Bakhmut, the Ukrainians have managed to fix multiple Russian divisions.”

As the squad of Ukrainian soldiers crept along the tree line toward the Russian bunker, artillery fire sent their enemies scrambling for cover. This was the chance they had been waiting for.

A soldier nicknamed Sniper sprinted forward and tossed a grenade into the tunnels where the Russians were sheltering. It exploded, sending smoke billowing. The Russian soldiers rushed out and Ukrainian forces hit them with mortars. Soon after, Ukraine took the position and then the entire road. 

Previous waves of Ukrainian troops and several strikes with explosive drones had failed to dislodge the Russians from a bend in the road near the tiny village of Andriivka in the country’s east. The Ukrainians had taken heavy casualties.

But Sniper’s assault helped tip the course of the battle in Ukraine’s favor. Two weeks later, Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade seized Andriivka. Then other Ukrainian units took the neighboring village.

The victories gave Ukrainian forces control of high ground south of Bakhmut, which Russia seized in May after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made retaking the city—Russia’s only significant gain in the past year of fighting—a key military goal for this year. With the main thrust of the counteroffensive in the southeast making slow progress, a victory in Bakhmut would bolster morale at home and provide allies abroad with evidence that Ukraine can win back lost ground.

Lyman

Lysychansk

Kramatorsk

Bakhmut

Andriivka

RUSSIAN-CONTROLLED

AREA

Horlivka

10 miles

UKRAINE

10 km

Detail

Donetsk

Makiivka

Note: Russian-controlled area as of Sept. 27

Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project
Emma Brown/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Some U.S. officials and military analysts question the wisdom of expending valuable troops and equipment on a shattered city of little strategic value. Ukraine would be better served, they say, concentrating forces in the southeast, where its army is seeking a breakthrough.

But Ukraine is pressing ahead here, aiming to show progress to doubters at home and in Washington. Advocates of the approach say it also pins down Russian troops where their defenses, while formidable, are weaker.

“By conducting a secondary effort in Bakhmut, the Ukrainians have managed to fix multiple Russian divisions,” said Jack Keane, a retired U.S. Army four-star general who now serves as the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War.

The question for Ukraine is the cost. With Russia’s population more than three times its neighbor’s, each Ukrainian casualty is more expensive. 

“The trenches were full of bodies. The ground was covered in bodies,” said a soldier from the 3rd Brigade known as Billy, a hulking, clean-shaven 24-year-old. “Most were Russians, but some were ours.” According to Ukrainian military rules, Billy and the other soldiers interviewed for this article requested to be identified only by their call signs.

At the end of summer, Ukrainian infantry began to advance on Andriivka, a village 6 miles south of Bakhmut with fewer than 100 inhabitants before the war. Hardly a wall was still standing. But its value stemmed from its location overlooking Bakhmut. A road runs through the village into the city, as does a rail line. 

“The idea is to cut off supplies and movement in and out of the city,” said Slip, a battalion commander in the 3rd Brigade and a veteran of the first Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014.

 

Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment about Moscow’s loss of Andriivka. Officials and state media initially disputed that the village was lost and have since focused on claiming large Ukrainian losses there.

Ukrainian forces started off trying to reach Andriivka along a tree line that extends half a mile west from the village. But the Russians beat them back with machine guns.

“We got stuck,” said Protsent, a company commander from the 3rd Brigade who has a mostly shaved head with a ponytail on top, a traditional Ukrainian hairstyle.

In late August, they tried another approach, sending troops down a road that enters the village from the northwest. 

Around 40 Russian troops were defending just 100 yards of road, which was lined with trenches. Artillery bombardments made the road a no-go for vehicles, which would have immediately drawn withering fire. The shelling pockmarked the earth with craters and tore branches from trees, leaving hardly any cover for infantry.

It took more than a week—and the dash to the Russian tunnels by Sniper—to bring Ukrainian troops to the edge of Andriivka. Then they had to win a foothold in the village.

On the morning of Sept. 13, a soldier called Sikach and a handful of others edged forward under the cover of smoke from a mortar bomb that obscured the view from any Russian aerial drones.

They pushed through the final trench and entered the remains of the first house in the village, then dashed into the next house, where they crouched behind a wall that was still standing. 

Another small team worked down the other side of the street. They communicated by shouting as the Russians had jammed their radios. A rocket-propelled grenade landed nearby, badly wounding two men in the other team. The Russians were fighting back.

The next several hours were chaos. One of the injured Ukrainians crawled halfway across the street before Sikach’s team heard him yelling and dragged him into cover. Sikach ran to the south side to help the other casualty. It was Sniper. 

Sikach, a thick red beard bristling around the chin strap on his helmet, put a tourniquet on Sniper’s leg, then a second after the first failed to stop the bleeding. 

Russian armored vehicles drove back and forth across the far end of the village. Bullets whizzed in all directions. A Ukrainian machine gun team tried to enter the village and provide cover but were hit before reaching the first house.

“I started to get nervous,” Sikach said.

He decided to evacuate Sniper himself and managed to carry him to a basement across the street. He realized they wouldn’t be able to make it all the way back to the road and tried the radio again. This time it worked. 

“I need reinforcements,” he told Protsent, the commander. 

Waiting near the edge of the village, Billy, a sniper, had expected to be part of the assault, but the radio was crackling with news of casualties. “We kept hearing, ‘Wounded here, more wounded there,’” he said. “We didn’t know how many.”

As they approached the first house, he and another soldier dashed across a field they knew to be mined, hoping to avoid spending time in the open. They made it across, then found their way to the basement where Sikach and a few others were sheltering. Two, including Sniper, were badly injured. 

As the men sat in the bunker, they heard a buzzing sound. An explosive drone smashed into one wall of the basement, then another. Shrapnel sprayed everywhere. 

Sikach and Billy were unhurt. But as dust and smoke filled the basement, Billy’s mind flashed back to June, when a missile crashed into the pizza parlor where he and others were having dinner, killing more than a dozen. He felt paralyzed, unsure if he could move.

Then he heard someone yelling, “Oh f—, my eye! My leg!”

He snapped out of the daze, thinking: “The only way to survive is to keep going.”

He saw several soldiers had been hit and began checking their wounds. One man had taken shrapnel to his eye and ankle. 

“We need to go,” Billy told him, fearing another strike. Sikach pulled Sniper out.

They made it to an evacuation point. Sniper survived and was whisked away for more treatment.  

Over the radio, Protsent ordered Billy back into the village. Billy said he wasn’t sure he could. 

“Are you injured?” Protsent asked. Billy said he wasn’t. Protsent asked Billy if he was defying an order. 

“At that point, all my nerves went,” Billy said. “I realized I had no choice. I had to go.” 

He spent the rest of the day evacuating the wounded from the village. Once, as he heard a shell whistling toward him, he dove into a trench along the road and found himself pressing his face against a corpse.

The Russians told their commanders that they could hold on, afraid of delivering bad news, Russian prisoners later told the Ukrainians. As the Ukrainians pushed forward, Russian commanders didn’t know what was happening or where to send reinforcements, helping Ukrainian forces make progress even though they were drastically outnumbered. 

Though the first two waves of Ukrainian soldiers took heavy casualties, the subsequent ones broke through. They moved slowly down the street, sprinting from one house to another between artillery fire, and seized a basement at the corner, shooting several Russians dead on the way and capturing others. Then they raced across a field to the village’s other street, a block south, and seized several houses on its east side.

When Russians tried to send in reinforcements from the east, Ukraine pummeled them with artillery.

With light fading, Slip decided to wait until morning to continue the assault: “We could have finished in one day, but it would have put our troops at risk.”

That night, Ukrainians also broke through Russian defenses in the tree line to the west. The Russians left in the village were surrounded.

During the night, most of the remaining Russians tried to sneak out of the village to the east and south. The Ukrainians shot and killed at least 11 of them, including a battalion commander, soldiers involved in the assault said, bringing the number killed to at least 200. Ukrainian casualties, Slip said, were far fewer.

On the morning of Sept. 14, Ukrainian drones spotted movement at only one house, where they knew several Russians were sheltering in the basement. They decided to try to take them alive, as they needed prisoners to exchange for Ukrainians in Russian custody. 

Slip recorded an audio message, then his troops flew a drone carrying a speaker over the last Russian-controlled house. 

“Russian servicemen….We’re offering you the chance to surrender,” Slip said in the recording. Two of their commanders were already dead, he told them. If they gave themselves up, he said, they would be treated humanely. If they declined, he said, “We’ll destroy you,” adding that they had 10 minutes to decide. 

The last three Russians soon emerged from the basement, yelling that they wanted to surrender. As they walked into the street with their hands up, a mortar landed right beside them, killing one instantly. 

The Ukrainians, who said the strike was a Russian attempt to prevent the surrender, took the other two into custody. Their commander was dead in the basement. The Ukrainians aren’t certain what killed him.