Even for those who witnessed the battle for Bakhmut, the longest and possibly deadliest battle of the Ukrainian war, words often fail.
Soldiers fighting in the shell-riddled city are trying to tell the carnage. The smell of the canals around the city and the incessant clamoring of shells, they say, are reminiscent of the Battle of Verdun in 1916, which lasted 300 days and was one of the bloodiest of World War I.
When the Russians declared “victory” on Saturday, relentless bombardment reduced former shops and homes to charred ruins. As Ukraine shifted its focus to the fighting outside, President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the city had been lost, saying “Bakhmut is only in our hearts.”
It’s an arc of destruction captured by photographers from The New York Times last year.
A First Strike
The loss of Bakhmut began with a Russian missile attack in May 2022. The front was still about 10 miles away and artillery thundered in the distance. There are very few vehicles on the streets except for military vehicles; shops and banks were boarded up. Only one or two cafes and supermarkets are still open.
By June, the Ukrainian government urged all those remaining in Bakhmut and other towns and cities along the path of the Russian advance to join the growing exodus of civilians fleeing for safety.
Closing the
Across the eastern Donbas region – a constellation of industrial cities and mining towns dotting the steppe – Russia has repeatedly reduced towns and cities to rubble before claiming the ruins. -other.
In July, after weeks of fierce fighting, Russia captured the twin cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, about 35 miles northeast of Bakhmut, and almost completely drove Ukraine out of Luhansk province. , which is part of the Donbas region.
The capture of Bakhmut is seen as a step towards two more important cities, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and to the rest of Donetsk, another province in the Donbas region. Artillery fire has intensified, and Ukrainian soldiers are being wounded and killed by the hundreds every day, government officials said. Houses burned and the city shook day and night.
Stating a Target
After Russia’s plan to quickly topple Ukraine’s government failed and its military suffered a series of humiliating defeats outside the capital, Kyiv, and in other northeastern cities, the Kremlin regrouped and redoubled its efforts to seize the Donbas region.
By summer, Russia had more firepower at its disposal than Ukraine, whose soldiers were running out of ammunition. At one point, Ukrainian officials estimated that Russian forces were firing 50,000 artillery rounds per day, noting that their own troops could only return about 5,000 to 6,000 rounds.
On August 1, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, announced that the battle for Bakhmut had begun. Not for the last time, speculation swirls: Can Bakhmut?
Fight at a distance
The city of Bakhmut was renamed Artyomovsk in 1924 by the Soviet leadership after the revolutionary Bolshevik Fyodor “Artem” Sergeyev, a friend of Stalin. In 2016, residents rejected the Soviet name.
In more peaceful times, Bakhmut was known for its sparkling-wine factory and salt mines. But as Russia steps up its attempt to seize the city, Ukrainian officials say it is their stronghold; over time, its symbolic importance grew even as military analysts questioned its military significance.
For most of the summer, the fighting took place at a distance as both sides engaged in artillery duels and long-range strikes.
Bridges were blown up and the ground was riddled with mines. Ukrainian soldiers are strengthening positions in the city and Russian forces are continuing to attack away from the perimeters.
As the fighting continues, authorities in Kyiv continue to try and convince civilians to leave. Fearing no heat, gas or power as winter approaches, Ukraine ordered mandatory evacuations in August.
That means thousands more have joined the estimated 14 million Ukrainians who have lost their homes across the country, often fleeing in packed evacuation trains — a lifetime embedded in a suitcase or two as they were on their way not knowing if they would make it back.
Casualties are mounting
In the fall, a stunning Ukrainian counter-offensive swept the Russians from the northeastern province of Kharkiv; soon, Ukraine pushed across southern Kherson province west of the Dnipro river, recapturing the city of Kherson, the provincial capital.
Despite the setbacks, one area that Russia continued to attack fiercely was Bakhmut.
The attack was led by a mercenary group known as Wagner, founded by a Russian tycoon who became a confidant of Vladimir V. Putin and used his ties to the Kremlin to amass wealth. The group’s ranks were bolstered by criminals recruited from Russian penal colonies. Despite poor morale and poor leadership, they continued to attack.
While the broader contours of the war changed in the fall, the battle for Bakhmut continued to be defined by terrible losses for both sides.
A City in Ruins
By November, the city was a maze of rubble, barricades and hastily constructed walls of explosives. Military analysts continue to question its strategic importance and whether the cost Ukraine is paying to deter the Russians is worth it. When The New York Times visited the city in late November, the hospital was filled with many soldiers suffering from all kinds of trauma. Gunshot wounds, shrapnel wounds, concussions.
“They come in batches – 10, 10, five, 10,” said Parus, one of the Ukrainian doctors at the hospital.
But a new phrase also entered the lexicon of Ukrainians across the country as soldiers battled to prevent the fall of the city: Bakhmut held.
Trying to Hold On
For the Ukrainian soldiers charged with holding Bakhmut, being surrounded by death and destruction could not stop the damage. And the fighting is relentless.
The mobilized Russian troops “just grab a rifle and walk down like in the Soviet era,” said a Ukrainian medic who went by the call sign Smile. “He was killed and the next one will come the same way.”
As the temperature dropped below freezing, the few remaining residents mostly lived in basement bunkers. They rely on volunteers to provide food and medical supplies, sometimes venturing out with firewood.
Both sides continue to slug it out. Russian forces say they entered the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut in early December. Again, military analysts wonder how long the Ukrainians can hold out.
Heavy Bombardment
By February, Russia had deployed hundreds of thousands of newly mobilized soldiers – replacing an estimated 200,000 killed and wounded in the war as a whole. Desperate for a victory, Russian fighters attacked Ukrainian positions, often with little support.
A Ukrainian soldier told The New York Times in February that they could not kill Russian troops easily. They destroy a wave only to be met by another group leading the fields littered with their own dead.
Despite suffering terrible losses, the Russians continued to attack, slowly choking the city as they shut down vital supply lines. By March, the main roads in and out of the city were under heavy bombardment and thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were at risk of being cut off.
As Ukrainian soldiers secured a key road and then began to reclaim ground north and south of the city, Russian forces intensified their withering bombardment of the city and the last blocks where the defenders in Ukraine continues.
Unfathomable Loss
Almost every night during the first two weeks of May, sometimes twice a night, the Russian Army rained fire on Ukrainian positions in the form of incendiary munitions. As the fires raged, Russian artillery and tanks fired, and snipers took cover in ruined buildings to prevent Ukrainian forces from bringing in reinforcements or moving troops.
Flames from Bakhmut lit up the night sky for miles, and smoke hung over the ruins in the early hours, so thick it looked like fog.
By Saturday, a year after the Russians first began attacking the city regularly, they succeeded in razing it to the ground.
Bakhmut is no longer a city but a tomb.
Bakhmut was probably an unlikely city in which to stand – for both sides. But over time, it took on an outsized importance: a symbol of the Ukrainian opposition and the Russian leaders’ determination to blast their way to a small victory in a little-known corner of the east. Ukraine. It has long been remembered as a place of unfathomable suffering.
Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall, Thomas Gibbons-NeffGaelle Girbes, Andrew E. Kramer, Evelina Riabenko, Michael Schwirtz, Maria VarenikovaSlava Yatsenko, Dmitry Yatsenko and Natalia Yermak.