A civilian in Bakhmut last month (DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images)
“The objective for today is to come back alive.” Yevgeny is a young commando from the “Mad Pack”, a special forces unit that has been fighting in Bakhmut since November. His words are familiar — lacquered with that mix of emotions common to almost all soldiers fighting on the frontlines of war: laughter and unease. We clamber into a Land Cruiser and head toward the city. “The situation is always changing,” he continues. “But one thing remains the same: the line of contact is always active.”
Even by the standards of eastern Ukraine, Bakhmut is a hellscape of destruction. Electricity has been out since August and water since October. Rows of uniform Soviet-style buildings now resemble a series of ragged molars, mottled by shells and blackened with soot.
The streets of this city that once had a population of 70,000 are almost empty of civilians, save for the odd elderly man or woman who ambles past amid the constant drum of nearby shelling. Everywhere I look I see soldiers: standing guard, advancing forwards, taking cover, congregating in doorways and behind walls, and almost always smoking. Our first port of call is a mosque. A small squat rectangular box that could be a normal house save for a small golden dome on its roof. Kazbek, a Chechen soldier fighting for Ukraine, who is our guide with Yevgeny, gets out of the car and goes to pray, bowing to Mecca as shells explode around us.
If you want to discover the madness of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, come to Bakhmut. The battle for the city is now the longest of the war. Russia launched a large offensive to try to take it in July 2022 after it took Severodonetsk, the final major city of the Luhansk region. The truth is Russian troops are dying in their thousands here — and possibly for nothing. The UK Ministry of Defence has outlined Bakhmut’s “limited operational value”: the city’s fall would be useful, but by no means decisive, in helping Russia press further through the Donbas. The fight, therefore, has become almost symbolic. “Bakhmut holds” is now a rallying cry for Ukrainians.
We advance further into the city. I see my first civilian vehicle: a minibus covered in grime, onto which someone has painted a white cross. Then we see an old man walking on the pavement. Yevgeny asks why he hasn’t left. “Where would I go?” he responds. He tells me that he lives with some friends in the city and has a stove and a basement to hide in. We turn a corner, and the Land Cruiser skids across the wet and pitted road. “The full contact front is just there,” says Yevgeny, pointing. Kazbek explains what this means: “The Russians are just 200 metres down that road. Tomorrow, I will come back and kill them.”
Shelling is a constant refrain in Bakhmut. But this close it’s different. Shells whistle around me, deep throaty roars that crescendo to a colossal bang as they strike home. “Now the Russians are attacking Ukrainian positions from three sides,” says Kazbek by way of explanation. We climb back into the Land Cruiser and drive into what appears to be a fenced-off wasteland right by the line of contact. On a wall some graffiti reads, “the republic of Ichkeria [Chechnya] will be free. Russians will be dead.” A lone cyclist comes into view. “Stupid,” says Yevgeny.
We drive out into what is left of the main road, until we stop by the city’s monument of a MIG 17 fighter jet. “This used to be a famous Instagram spot,” says my photographer Nata. I recently sprained my ankle so I am hobbling slightly, though my support boot means I can walk almost normally. I pose by the plane, resting gingerly on my foot. Kazbek laughs. I remember his words when we met: “I’ve never seen anyone come to the front with a crutch before.
Eventually, Kazbek decides it’s time to return to base. “There are,” he excitedly explains, “two roads to get out. The one that is constantly shelled much more interesting, so let’s take that!” Nata looks less than impressed. As we drive down the road, I see holes carved out by shells and burned-out vehicles. War zones can assume many shapes: sometimes they’re cratered and grey like the surface of the moon; other times they are just a mesh of urban destruction. Bakhmut resembles the bottom of the ocean, the tangled vehicles like metal crustaceans hugging the seabed, silent witnesses to it all.
***
The Mad Pack live in a base swaddled in concrete where they spend most of their lives underground to avoid the shelling. It’s a no-frills affair. My bed is a door laid on the concrete floor with a sleeping bag on it, while Nata sleeps on a plastic waterbed to my right. We are divided by a anti-tank Javelin case. In the corner of the room stands one of the many NLAWs that Britain has delivered to Ukraine. “God bless the United Kingdom; God bless Boris Johnson!” says Kazbek to me as we pose with one.
The night before we entered Bakhmut, I met “Ivan”, the unit’s commander, whose call sign is Coyote. We were in an underground room amid piles of cardboard boxes, a mound of firewood, a wooden stove of the kind you see everywhere on the front in Ukraine and, the focal point of the room, a chess set that the soldiers take turns to use. Coyote is 34 and has been fighting since the war began in 2014. His unit is Special Forces, he says. He can’t give me details about their operations, but he has two units on rotation. His main tasks are planning and special ops — taking the fight to the enemy.
Bakhmut is important to Russia because of Putin’s “populist needs”, he says. “Since February 24, the Russians have had few victories and many defeats. They need this victory; the city is close to the border and to their logistics. They cannot attack Kherson [in the south] because of the river, and in other territories on the front lines they have supply problems. Bakhmut is the only spot where theoretically they can win. But if we were to lose Bakhmut, then speaking without emotion, it would not be a strategic defeat, we’d just lose a town. But in the meantime, we tie up a large force of Russians so they cannot proceed in other areas. We buy time for other Ukrainian forces.”
The situation is difficult, he admits, but controlled. The Ukrainians have suffered significant losses, as have the enemy. “They are going building-by-building. They are trying to encircle us; they keep trying again and again.”
The Russian tactics are based on what I hear described as “meat waves” of soldiers, usually conscripts or prisoners fighting for the Wagner mercenary group who are promised a pardon in the unlikely event they survive more than six months here. The Ukrainians often wipe them out. But more always come. It’s the downside of fighting an enemy with a population three times the size and little regard for the lives of its citizens. “The waves can unnerve the new guys,” says Coyote. “They destroy the first one and then more keep coming; they start to think it will never end. The experienced guys just swap their rifle for a machine gun and it’s all good!”
But the fight is tough. Russian forces have now secured northern access to the city and also recently made a breakthrough on the south towards the centre. They have surrounded the town and have fire control of the only road out. Coyote, though, remains bullish. From November to the beginning of January, the Ukrainians lost about 10 positions; since then, they have lost only four. “The artillery and drones are working,” he says. I ask him about their use of drones, the biggest change in the war since I was here last in the spring. Coyote smiles, gets up and returns, grinning even more, with a small blue object — a six-inch rocket with three fins topped with a golden dome. “We make it on a 3D printer. It costs about $30,” he tells me with pride. “We fill it with explosives, and then put it in one of our drones… and drop.”
One of the other officers, who gave his name as his call sign “Barman”, explains their importance. “A while ago we used big, expensive tactical drones, made especially for the military,” he tells me. “But now, small and medium-sized civilian drones are becoming separate military units because they can cause great damage to the enemy.”
He continues. “It used to take months, sometimes years, to train people to go into enemy territory and send in the coordinates for the artillery to fire. Now, one civilian drone can do it. It saves lives and even if it gets destroyed you can buy a new one cheaply. We have learned how to attach small grenades and bombs to them. Now we can send up a small $3,000 Mavik 3 with a grenade — and if you drop it perfectly on a T-90 you can take out a tank that costs millions.” His words bring home a truth that has gradually dawned on me over the past few years. Talk of future war tends to be dominated by AI and visions of marauding robot soldiers, but what I see here is something different: the weaponisation of the quotidian. Cheap drones you can buy online, and plastic projectiles you can knock out on a printer in your living room, are now affecting the balance of power in conflict.
Coyote gives me his final assessment. “I think the battle will continue for about one or two months unless there is a major encirclement or something unexpected happens — it will go street by street; the artillery will slowly destroy all the tall buildings and it will [descend to] urban warfare. It will crawl to an end.” As we finish, I ask him what he would say to Putin if he were here now. “One second,” he says and gets up. He returns with a pistol and pulls the trigger. Its click reverberates around the room. “I’d say nothing — just kill him.”
Later, Coyote is in a playful mood. “What we sometimes also do,” he tells me, “is drop dildos from the drones, just to show them the contempt we have for them. Also, it’s a taste of what’s coming to them — how we’re going to fuck them.” I ask what happens if they hit a Russian soldier on the head. Everyone laughs. Coyote, still looking mischievous, describes how they sometimes find lists of “heroic deaths” written on the walls of Russian positions they capture. “You know, they have a photo of the guy and under it ‘Vlad was killed by a Bayraktar’ and so on…. Imagine: ‘Here lies Sergei — he was killed by a massive cock.’”
***
Dinner is served. In a bucket on the floor, Kazbek washes his hands, observing Muslim custom. In the kitchen, an older man carrying a large knife, which is definitely not designed for cooking, hands me a bowl of soup. Our meal is laid out on a long table: eggs, tomato with grated cheese, cold chicken, pancake rolls, sausages, several plates of bread, a potato salad, egg with garlic, another plate of cold meats, and a plate of sliced lemon. All this comes from Ukrainian volunteers, adds Kazbek.
Yevgeny interrupts the meal to show us his war wounds. He gets out his phone and opens Instagram. A photo shows him with two pieces of shrapnel, one each in his head and leg. He explains how he posted the image and then blocked all his relatives from seeing it. “It happened on the first day of the war — 24 February! You know the funniest thing? That’s also my birthday. From now on… it’s two birthdays for me!”
Dinner ends and the soldiers leave to wind down. Me and Nata are left. She’s been discussing the cultural aspect of the war with Yevgeny and Kazbek because it’s a war not just against Ukrainian territory but against its very essence as a nation. Putin says there is no such thing as Ukraine, which means everything from its language to its history and literature must be denied. “For years we were told Ukrainian was just for peasants and Russian was for the sophisticated,” she says. “I see Russians and they can barely speak it. I can live without Dostoevsky. Look at Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikoff kills an old woman for money and then spends the entire book trying to work out why he did it. I’ll tell you why he did it: because he’s trash.”
After dinner, we sit in the communal area. I look around at these men, some of whom have been fighting for almost a decade. They are tired but undiminished: this fight is existential for them. Tendrils of cigarette smoke curl towards the ceiling. The soft shuffle of moving chess pieces is almost finished. Kazbek has composed a song about Bakhmut. Yevgeny gets out a guitar and starts to sing.
Bakhmut, Bakhmut you are so proud and so brave
you left your mark on fate.
Bakhmut Bakhmut, the enemy has come leaving ruin
But we are all waiting…
for a new dawn in Ukraine.
David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)
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SubscribeI hugely enjoyed her Wolf Hall trilogy, it’s such a pity she can’t see historical parallels between the Tudor period that most obviously fascinates her and the present. David Starkey – before his public shunning – gave a brilliant lecture drawing the parallels between the break with Rome in Henry’s time and the break with Brussels in our own.
You would imagine that historians who have to be alive to nuance and be able to see patterns in the past, would be able to discern echoes of those patterns in the present. Yet Ms Mantel appears to have a blind spot due to her personal animus towards the PM and her apparent loathing of the ghastly, brexity Untermensch.
I’ve written previously about where I think Brexit will sit in our history – I’m very much of the view that it will seen as the latest in a long line of occasions when the people of these isles have stood up to those in power and asserted and fought for their rights.
As a country we have long taken pride in our democratic tradition. Even those on the political Left, who recoil from most of British history, have always wanted to associate themselves with the struggles of the British people to achieve a voice, to have a say – however small – in shaping our national destiny.
Before most other countries in Europe, we created a system of Popular sovereignty, the idea that people should have a say in how they are governed – and by whom.
Our membership of what the EU had become was denying the British people their democratic say, and they rebelled against it. For a good many years after the 1975 vote, there was general acceptance of our place in the EEC and its other incarnations. Of course I can’t speak for all 17.4 million Leave voters (nor the countless millions of Eurosceptics across the EU) but I would hazard that a very large number of them would agree that the Common Market had made sense. A group of entirely sovereign European nations agreeing to cooperate on trade. Had we remained simply as that there would have been a willingness – even enthusiasm – for the project.
Since Maastricht, it was the creeping usurpation of powers without a democratic mandate that caused the rising Euroscepticism (not merely here in the UK but across all of Europe). 40 years after our vote to stay in, the EEC had morphed into an entirely different organisation that had accrued untold additional powers and areas of responsibilities (and sought to accrue yet more) without seeking the consent of the governed.
In all that time – despite promises from previous PMs – we had not been afforded the opportunity to voice our opinion on our membership of a completely different entity – one that was moving towards full fiscal and political union. Finally, 24 years after Maastricht, we were given the chance – our first chance – to voice our support for it but instead we rejected it.
The horrified establishment, determined to maintain a comfortable status quo that suited them very well, then attempted to thwart the expressed will of the people – who they regarded with contempt.
Historically, the demands of all the various rebellions and movements against entrenched privilege and power in this country have essentially been the same, namely that if – as citizens – we are expected to live by the laws of the land then we should have a say in who makes those laws – with the obvious corollary that if we have no capacity to influence who makes the laws, then we will break the law. The Peasants Revolt, the English Civil War, the Chartists, the Suffragettes, it has all been the same, the right to have a say in our national destiny. The right to have a vote and, since achieving universal suffrage, that each vote should count the same whether cast by duke or dustman, young or old, male or female.
We fought for those rights. We hold those rights dear. They are rights that everyone, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum, claims to hold dear. Even those who might not stop to consider those rights in the abstract, still have a sense that democratic sovereignty and the common law are the birthright of every Briton, thanks to those who came before us and fought to gain those rights.
Yet many of the self-same politicians, writers and public figures who are always happy to pay lip service to those struggles and want to be seen commemorating the anniversaries, tried to deny the common man his vote – using PRECISELY the same arguments that the patrician classes had used to deny their votes previously.
On the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre – where protestors whose banners called for “Universal Suffrage” and “Liberty & Fraternity” were ridden down and killed by a Cavalry charge in St Peters Fields – the BBC, the Guardian, and a whole variety of bien pensant commentators were at great pains to lay claim to the heritage of the protestors. Articles and programmes abounded, with the great and good all wishing to associate themselves with the noble aims of the Perterloo “martyrs”, whilst at the very same moment they were explicitly engaged in a campaign to disenfranchise millions of ordinary voters who’d voted for Brexit. Ms mantel was a vocal member of the wildly anti-democratic 2nd Ref campaign, that had deep support from other metropolitan elitists and luvvies.
The hypocrisy was simply breath-taking.
The arguments the establishment used – that the “little people” were too ill-informed, too easily swayed by lies etc, were precisely the same arguments used against universal suffrage: That working class people, or women, were not informed enough, not educated enough, not intellectually robust enough, to deserve the vote.
If you support the concept of Free Speech then that has to extend to supporting the right of someone you disagree with being allowed to say things you would recoil from. If you support the idea of universal suffrage then that has to extend to accepting the result of such a democratic vote, even if the result is one with which you strongly disagree. If you refuse to accept a democratic vote, you are not a democrat – it’s a pretty fundamental point.
We are past Peterloo type insurrection now, we are not going to see cavalry charges on our streets, or armed uprisings (whatever the more lurid catastrophists employed by the Guardian might like to pretend), but the fallout from the attempt to disenfranchise such a large number of voters (the majority view at the referendum, let’s not forget) was profound. We could see what was happening and were angry about it – and rightly so.
So, when public figures suggest they’re ashamed of this country it only comes across as arrogance, bitterness and petulance, rather than principle. For all their self-perceived high-mindedness, they should consider this: – You might like to claim the heritage of the Chartists and wish to commemorate the Peterloo Massacre but just remember which side of this divide you were on. When it came to it, you did not stand for Universal Suffrage, Liberty or Fraternity, you stood with those cheering on the forces who’d ride roughshod over the plebs just to maintain their comfortable status quo.
T’rific Paddy Taylor
What a wonderful comment. Hats off
Lest we forget: the current Leader of the Opposition colluded with foreign powers to obstruct HMG in the Withdrawal talks in an attempt to overturn the referendum result.
Excellent post, thank you, would uptick ten times if I could.
It was the FO and the Civil service post Suez in 1956 who pushed tojoin Europe and politicians like Heath. heath was described as someone who should have been acivil servant , not a politician. As Peter Shore said after Suez, 2 The FO had a nervous breakdown “. What people ignore is that after 1939 and nationalisation the group who ran Britain were the civil servants and their friends in the Law, universities, CBI and nationalised industries. They were highly educated but lacked common sense and backbone. This group lacked the practical skills and backbone to confront the shop stewards in the un and semi skilled unions, so considered Britain should have a future in the EEC.
We entered the EEC to benefit trade because shop stewards in semi skilled unions were destroying Britain’s industry. The EEC was always intended to be an empire, a challenge to the USSR and USA but either the FO and Heath did not realise or knew but but did not tell the British public. In the last 10 to 20 years vast swathes of Britains came to realise we had lost our sovereignty to the EU Empire.
Those who sacrifice safety for security, derserve neither.
TImid men prefer the calm despotism to the tempestuous seas of liberty.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom go home from us in peace . We ask not your consel.or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed. May your chains set lightly upon you.
I look forward to Ms Mantel’s scintillating trilogy on Brian Boru!
As an ulsterman and holder of both British and Irish passports, I say this is yet another Brexit dividend and don’t let the door hit you on the way out….
The literal grass in Ireland is greener but the metaphorical grass is another story.
Perhaps like many others of her ilk the real reason she is upset is because her cleaner went home and she’d have to pay more than minimum wage to get a new one.
Indeed.
She turned Thomas Cromwell into Nick Clegg. Who will she reinvent Brian Boru as? Justin Trudeau maybe.
my God what a brilliant comment full of on-point observations – I’m an Irish my myself with both passports
Hilary Mantel is NOT an historian. Please, someone, fix that.
“Hooray for Hilary”.
Now relieve her of her UK passport, and if she wants back in, turn her around, at the border, and speed her on her way with a size ten up the posterior. Oh, and if she has a house in the UK then relieve her of it and give it to somebody more in need, I understand there are lots of new arrivals, with big families, who would probably be very grateful of the opportunity to live in the Uk, without publicly sh*****g all over it.
It should be mandatory. Only ONE citizenship per person at any one time.
Why are we still discussing ways to stop the Kent dinghies? We could just hand out free tickets from Charles de Gaulle to Dublin to every refugee in Sangatte. According to Hilary Mantel, the Irish are keen to welcome all comers.
That’s a bit dangerous as there are no border controls between Ireland and the UK.
The comment about refugees shows how deluded Mantel is. She should come and listen to the rhetoric on that subject in, well, more or less any other European country. Britain might not look so bad.
Her comments also imply that the EU/being in the EU imbues a country with a certain moral superiority. How? The EU recently quadrupled the amount of humanitarian aid it would make available for Afghan refugees. But before Mantel and her ilk start getting all doey-eyed about this, this move was anything other than altruistic. It was basically a bribe to countries like Pakistan etc. to keep the refugees OVER THERE and not let them get anywhere near the Aegean. Ever since things spiralled out of control in Afghanistan, there has been a collective hyperventilation going on in Europe and NONE of it, I repeat: NONE OF IT has to do with concern about human welfare and everything to do with keeping migrants the hell away from our borders.
Chew on that, Hilary.
And, I would like to add another consideration for Mantel if she’s so sure the EU is morally superior: think about the smear campaign that went on over the AstraZeneca vaccine. Even pro-EU publications like Politico have openly stated that this was driven by political considerations and has had the very real-world effect of increasing vaccine hesitancy and making it harder to put an end to the pandemic around the world. Mixing up politics and public health…not really a good look for a lovely, cuddly, peace project is it?
The EU’s conduct over the AstraZeneca vaccine was utterly reprehensible. People have almost certainly died as a consequence. If the UK (or Trump) has behaved in a similar way, the screams of condemnation would have been long, loud and hysterical.
Ireland’s record on refugees is not particularly generous.
Less so than countries certain Irish folk like to criticise on the issue, like UK and Australia.
Indeed, and following independence the Irish indulged in a fair old bit of ethnic cleansing but we don’t want to talk about that since it would damage the image the Irish have of themselves as “loved as warm, charming and banterous folk”
“the Irish indulged in a fair old bit of ethnic cleansing” can you back that up with facts?
I am Irish-born and raised with half my family from NI and the other from ROI – do you know why we have two countries on the one island it is because of Westminster and the Royals. See I didn’t blame the brits, only the elites.
as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s on both sides of the border, I know what live ammunitions, bombs and poverty looks
there was no ethnic cleaning between the Irish, it was by Westminster and has been for the last 600 years.
Ireland had a population of 11 million in 1840 and by 1940 it was down to 2.9 million – now that was an ethnic cleansing
You come across as some bitter old bousy who has been in this mortal realm a bit too long to enjoy it anymore.
have you been to Ireland recently, it is full of immigrants – not sure how you can distinguish a refugee from an immigrant they don’t wear badges.
In any event, most of the men coming across the channel are not refugees they are illegal immigrants – shitting on Ireland isn’t going to change that.
I would have returned to my native Canada if Jeremy Jewbaiter had won the 2019 election.
Jeremy looks like a better option than Boris or Keir both of them are more woke than him, also both of them have been sworn in to the WEF possy.
Build Back Better
I’m an Irish citizen through pure accident of birth. My father was born in Ireland but came to the UK at the age of three. He married my German mother while serving in Germany with the British army and my older brother and I were born on UK bases in Germany. I’ve lived in the UK continuously for 58 years and have only ever visited Ireland for three or four days ‘mini-breaks’. I’d gladly become a UK citizen but would have to face the same bureaucracy and expense as a recent arrival from the other side of the World. I know I’m whingeing but it does seem a bit silly.
same as that, it just cost me over £1,500 and that apparently was the cheap route. if you do it the English channel route you can get everything for free, plus a hotel and the dole while you wait the 5 years for processing.
Did anyone say “tax breaks for artists/writers resident in Ireland”?
pulling a reverse-Mantel sounds like something Simone Biles would do
or possibly Stormy Daniels?
“I haven’t renewed my Irish passport, partly out of laziness” you will find the online renewal process amazing compared to the Homes Office. You will get your passport delivered to your down within 2 to 3 days, it literally takes 10 minutes to run through the whole thing online.
I am Irish and am now in the process of becoming an English citizen not because one is better than the other but because it is a handy thing to have – one will have my Irish name and the other will have my English name.
It also entitles my children too both of them
Is it unHerd policy to feature unflattering photos of persons with whom they disagree? This should not be the policy of a respectable journal.
If you mean the one of Ms Mantel, it’s a good likeness. But so what?
It’s the photo being run on many pieces about her Repubblica interview. And to be honest I don’t think I have ever seen a photo of Hilary Mantel that was really “flattering”. UnHerd had to pick one!