Devastation on Ukraine’s eastern front, where the notorious Wagner group is making gains

 

The weather in Bakhmut deceives the senses, sunny and warm – almost peaceful.

But a deafening boom of outgoing artillery from the critical eastern Ukrainian town shook that notion out of the system, as Ukrainian soldiers on Wednesday launched offensives to try to reclaim positions from Russian forces.

Three men could be seen making a run for it out of town, one with a microwave strapped to his back.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has been going on for eight months. It’s only when you descend into the city of Bakhmut that you really get a sense of the devastation and destitution that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion has wrought. 

A vantage point gives a view over the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

 

Our guide is a Ukrainian military medic, who goes by the nom-de-guerre “Katrusya.” In tinted sunglasses and fatigues, she slings our convoy into the center of the city at breakneck speed.

Flashing through the windows is a near ghost town.

“For the past two months, Russians have been trying to break into the city defenses and have not been successful,” she tells us between cigarettes.

She took us to see a building that had just been shelled. Our car hadn’t even come to a complete halt as another artillery shell hit close by. We scrambled for cover as more artillery rained down nearby for around 20 minutes. 

Katrusya is a combat medic in Bakhmut. She lost her husband in the fighting a month ago.

 

The attacks are normal, says Katrusya, as she leans on a wall – a picture of composure – as we take shelter from the incoming shells.

“The artillery attacks fly every day so it’s never quiet here. Other parts of the city take hits many times a day,” she says.

A handful of residents are still on the streets of Bakhmut. Buildings have no windows; the streets are pockmarked with craters and industrial garbage bins have merged into small pools of trash.

Those who remain seem to live in a parallel universe. They’re out on their bikes, running errands, and elderly women drag their shopping trolleys behind them, though which shops are open seems a mystery.

Sergey is one of those Bakhmut inhabitants still walking the streets. Asked if he is worried about the shelling he replies, “Afraid of what, mate? Everything is going to be okay.”

He then stares out into the distance, almost as if he doesn’t really believe his own words.

 

Katrusya says that the intense fighting has cost the lives of numerous soldiers and civilians here. “I cannot give you the number, but it is a lot… there are a lot of injured from both sides and also lots of dead.”

She lost her husband fighting the Russians in Bakhmut just a month ago. Only antidepressants mask the pain, she says.

The struggle for Bakhmut has grown ever more ferocious in recent days. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called the fighting in the city “the most difficult.”

The significance of the city cannot be overstressed.

Bakhmut lies at a fork that points toward two other strategic towns in the Donetsk region: Konstantinivka to the southwest, and Kramatorsk and Sloviansk to the northwest. All three are key to Putin’s total control of the region.

The scenes in Bakhmut, though, are different to those across the rest of the country, where Ukraine has largely been able to repel Russia’s advance and even gain territory in recent weeks as Russian forces retreated at the end of September.

Here, Russian forces have made small, steady gains, largely thanks to the Wagner group, which is considered by analysts to be a Kremlin-approved private military company.

Reports on social media and in Russian state media say Wagner mercenaries are on the outskirts of Bakhmut, in a small village called Ivangrad.

On social network Telegram, Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin has acknowledged that resistance from the city is stiff.

“The situation near Bakhmut is stably difficult, the Ukrainian troops are putting up decent resistance and the legend of the fleeing Ukrainians is just a legend. Ukrainians are guys with the same iron balls as we are,” he wrote.

Katrusya says she’s come up against Wagner fighters and, despite their international notoriety, they seem more like a hodgepodge of soldiers for hire, she says.

“They are a rabble. There are a few, very well-trained professional fighters, but the majority of them have found themselves accidentally fighting in this war looking for money or for the ability to get out of jail,” she said.

In September, video surfaced appearing to show Prigozhin recruiting prisoners from Russian jails for Wagner, offering a promise of clemency in exchange for six months’ combat service in Ukraine.

Despite her heartbreak, Katrusya’s spirit isn’t dimmed. The one goal is victory.

“The price for Ukraine will be enormous,” she acknowledges. “We will lose the best of the best, the most motivated and trained but we will definitely win; we have no other choice, it is our land. We will win absolutely.” 

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Putin to host ceremony annexing occupied Ukrainian territories on Friday, Kremlin says

 

Russia will on Friday begin formally annexing up to 18% of Ukrainian territory, with President Vladimir Putin expected to host a ceremony in the Kremlin to declare four occupied Ukrainian territories part of Russia.

The ceremony would take place on Friday at 15:00 local time (08:00 ET) in the Kremlin’s St. George’s Hall, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Putin will deliver a speech and meet with Russian-backed leaders of the four occupied regions on the sidelines of the ceremony, he added.

Next week, Russia’s two houses of parliament – the State Duma and Federation Council – will consider the annexation.

Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, will meet on October 3 and 4, its chairman, Vyacheslav Volodin, said, according to RIA Novosti. The state news agency cited Volodin as saying that the State Duma’s schedule had been adjusted so the deputies could make legislative decisions based on the supposed results of the polls.

The Federation Council, Russia’s upper house, will consider the annexation of the occupied Ukrainian territories on October 4, Andrey Klishas, Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation, said in a Telegram post on Thursday.

The announcements come after people in four occupied areas of Ukraine supposedly voted in huge numbers in favor of joining Russia, in five-day polls that were illegal under international law and dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a sham.

The so-called referendums were organized by Russian-backed separatists in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) in the eastern Donbas region, where fighting has raged since the rebels seized control of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014.

The other two areas to hold so-called referendums were Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine. Russia has occupied the two regions since shortly after it invaded the country in late February.

Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Russian-backed administration in Kherson, urged Putin to annex the region on Wednesday, following the so-called referendum there.

The Moscow-aligned leadership in all four places claimed the processes yielded massive majorities for those “voting” in favor of acceding to Russian sovereignty: 87.05% in Kherson, 93.11% in Zaporizhzhia, 98.42% in the LPR and 99.23% in the DPR.

The process was widely panned as illegitimate, as experts said it was impossible to hold a free and fair election in a war zone or occupied territory. A top United Nations official, Rosemary DiCarlo, said the votes “cannot be called a genuine expression of the popular will.”

“Unilateral actions aimed to provide a veneer of legitimacy to the attempted acquisition by force by one state of another state’s territory, while claiming to represent the will of the people, cannot be regarded as legal under international law,” said DiCarlo, the UN’s under-secretary-general.

Meanwhile, the European Union on Wednesday proposed additional sanctions in retaliation for Moscow’s annexation plan, targeting “those involved in Russia occupation and illegal annexation of areas of Ukraine,” including “the proxy Russian authorities in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and other Russian individuals who organized and facilitated the sham referenda in these four occupied territories of Ukraine.”

Reports from the ground suggest that voting in the occupied regions was done essentially – and in some cases, literally – at gunpoint. Serhii Hayday, the Ukrainian head of the Luhansk region military administration, said that authorities were going door to door, trailed by armed guards, to collect votes, and that local populations were being intimidated into voting to join Russia.

The results also contradict data from before the war. An exclusive CNN poll of Ukrainians conducted in February, just before Russia’s invasion, found just 18% of Ukrainians in the east – including the Luhansk and Donetsk regions – agreed with the statement that “Russia and Ukraine should be one country,” while 16% of Ukrainians in the south, which included the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, supported it.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday the process was a “farce” that “cannot even be called an imitation of referendums.”

Zelensky also accused Russia of attempting to use the same strategy as it did when Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014. A referendum organized there, which officially saw 97% of voters back annexation, was ratified by Russian lawmakers within a week. Much of the international community did not respect that outcome, and it appears they will do the same with Tuesday’s results.

Some of the separatist leaders involved in carrying out sham referendums to secede from Ukraine and join Russia landed in Moscow Thursday, according to a photograph posted by the Russia-appointed deputy head of the Kherson regional military administration Kirill Stremousov.

LPR chief Leonid Pasechnik told Russian state news agency TASS Thursday he was also in the Russian capital.

Reuters said Thursday that a stage with giant video screens has been set up on Red Square, alongside billboards proclaiming “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson - Russia!.” TASS had previously reported that a rally would be held in front of the Kremlin on Friday in support of the poll results of the so-called referendums.

Feared military escalation

Alhough the results of the Russian-backed referendums are unsurprising, there is concern Russia’s attempts to assert sovereignty over Ukrainian territory could portend a dangerous escalation in the seven-month-long war.

The Kremlin is expected to treat the territories as though they are parts of Russia, warning that it would defend them as such – signaling a potential military escalation once the Ukrainian Army attempts to reclaim them.

In an address on September 21, Putin raised the specter of nuclear weapons, saying he would use “all the means at our disposal” if he deemed the “territorial integrity” of Russia to be jeopardized.

The so-called referendums came after a sudden and successful Ukrainian offensive through most of the occupied Kharkiv region swung momentum in the conflict back towards Kyiv this month, galvanizing Ukraine’s Western backers and causing anger in Russia, which has time and again been stymied on the battlefield.

With losses piling up, Putin has enacted a “partial mobilization” of Russian citizens, meaning those who are in the reserve could be called up and nationals with military experience would be subject to conscription – and potentially sent to defend the illegally annexed territories. At the outset of the conflict, Putin was careful to emphasize that the military assault, euphemistically referred to as a “special military operation,” would only be fought by military professionals.

More than 200,000 people have traveled from Russia into Georgia, Kazakhstan and the EU since the announcement. Upwards of 50,000 Russians have fled to Finland and at least 100,000 have crossed into Kazakhstan. Images from crossings into Finland, Georgia and Mongolia show massive traffic jams on the Russian side of each border.

Protests against the partial mobilization have broken out in some of Russia’s ethnic minority regions. Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky, have alleged that Russia is forcibly drafting domestic protesters; entire segments of male populations in remote villages; and fighting-age men from minority communities as well as occupied territories in Ukraine. A Ukrainian mayor-in-exile alleged Russia was conscripting his constituents to “use them as cannon fodder.”

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Western support for Kyiv must not cease, say NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Destroyed vehicles are pictured in the city of Lysychansk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on June 18, 2022.

 

The West must prepare for a long war in Ukraine as Russia makes incremental gains in a furious battle to control the country's east, the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have both said.

In separate comments published Sunday, Stoltenberg and Johnson also reiterated that Western governments must continue to support Ukraine to deter future aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Stoltenberg told the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag that nobody knew how long the conflict would last but "we need to prepare for the fact that it could take years."

"We must not cease to support Ukraine. Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, but also because of rising energy and food prices."

Boris Johnson, writing in the Sunday Times after his second visit to Kyiv on Friday, said Western allies must "steel ourselves for a long war, as Putin resorts to a campaign of attrition, trying to grind down Ukraine by sheer brutality."

Johnson said that seizing all of Ukraine's Donbas, which covers much of eastern Ukraine, had been Putin's objective for the last eight years "when he ignited a separatist rebellion and launched his first invasion."

While Russia was still short of this goal, "Putin may not realise it but his grand imperial design for the total reconquest of Ukraine has been derailed. In his isolation, he may still think total conquest is possible."

Both men stressed the need to avert future Russian aggression.

Stoltenberg said: "If Putin learns the lesson from this war that he can just carry on as he did after the Georgia war in 2008 and the occupation of Crimea in 2014, then we will pay a much higher price."

Johnson asked what would happen if President Putin was free to keep all the areas of Ukraine now controlled by Russian forces. "What if no one was willing to lift a finger as he annexed this conquered territory and its fearful people into a greater Russia? Would this bring peace?"

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the second time in Kyiv on Friday.

 

Johnson said that through firm long-term support for Ukraine, "we and our allies will be protecting our own security as much as Ukraine's and safeguarding the world from the lethal dreams of Putin and those who might seek to copy them."

Johnson wrote: "Time is the vital factor. Everything will depend on whether Ukraine can strengthen its ability to defend its soil faster than Russia can renew its capacity to attack. Our task is to enlist time on Ukraine's side."

'Strategic advantage'

On Sunday, Ukrainian officials said heavy fighting continues in the city of Severodonetsk -- the epicenter of the bloody battle for Ukraine's eastern Donbas region -- and surrounding communities as Russian forces try to break the resistance of Ukrainian defenders and capture parts of the eastern Luhansk region they don't already control.

Serhii Hayday, head of the regional military administration, said the "battles for Severodonetsk continue," and that the sprawling Azot chemical plant, where some 500 civilians are sheltering, had been shelled again.

Smoke and dirt rise from the city of Severodonetsk on June 17.

 

A Ukrainian serviceman walks along an entrenched position on the front line near Avdiivka, Donetsk region on June 18/

Russian operations appear designed to break Ukrainian defenses to the south of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, cutting off Ukrainian units still defending the two strategically important cities.

To the west, in the Donetsk region, also in the Donbas, the Ukrainian military reported further shelling of Ukrainian positions near Sloviansk. There was also a missile strike in the area, according to an operational update by the Ukrainian General Staff. But there appears to have been little change in frontline positions.

Stoltenberg was cautiously optimistic that Ukraine could turn the tide of the war. "Although the battle in Donbass is being waged more and more brutally by Russia, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting valiantly. With more modern weapons, the probability increases that Ukraine will be able to drive Putin's troops out of Donbas again."

Ukraine's military has been burning through Soviet-era ammunition that fits older systems. While Western weapon systems are arriving, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky warned this week that they needed to come faster as Russia amasses a significant artillery advantage around the two cities in eastern Ukraine.

US officials insist that Western arms are still flowing to the front lines of the fight. But local reports of weapons shortages -- and frustrated pleas from Ukrainian officials on the front lines -- have raised questions about how effectively supply lines are running.

The Biden administration announced Wednesday it was providing an additional $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine, a package that includes shipments of additional howitzers, ammunition and coastal defense systems. While the UK "plans to work with our friends to prepare Ukrainian forces to defend their country, with the potential to train up to 10,000 soldiers every 120 days," Johnson said.

While Russia has been making incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, Johnson stressed the attrition of Russian forces in the grinding battles, saying Russia would need "years, perhaps decades, to replace this hardware. And hour by hour Russian forces are expending equipment and ammunition faster than their factories can produce them." 

Data as of June 16, 2022 at 3 p.m. ET

Notes: “Assessed” means the Institute for the Study of War has received reliable and independently verifiable information to demonstrate Russian control or advances in those areas. Russian advances are areas where Russian forces have operated in or launched attacks, but they do not control them. “Claimed” areas are where sources have said control or counteroffensives are occurring, but ISW cannot corroborate nor demonstrate them to be false.

Sources: The Institute for the Study of War with AEI’s Critical Threats Project; LandScan HD for Ukraine, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Graphic: Renée Rigdon, CNN

 

In late May, Ukrainian officials said Russian units were being reinforced by mothballed Soviet-era T-62 tanks, which appeared to have been brought out of storage.

The British Prime Minister added: "The UK and our friends must respond by ensuring that Ukraine has the strategic endurance to survive and eventually prevail."

He laid out four essential steps to support Ukraine, which included: preserving the Ukrainian state which includes: ensuring the country receives "weapons, equipment, ammunition and training more rapidly than the invader and build up its capacity to use our help;" a "long-term effort to develop" alternative overland routes to overcome Russia's "stranglehold on Ukraine's economy by blockading its principal export routes across the Black Sea." 

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg wrote that during an upcoming NATO summit a new strategy concept shall be adopted that will declare Russia as "a threat to our security, peace and stability."

 

This weekend, Zelensky visited the frontlines in the coastal city of Odesa and southern city of Mykolaiv, which are both Russian targets in its attempt to seize the Black Sea coast.

Johnson added that Russian blockade of Black Sea ports meant that some "25 million tonnes of corn and wheat -- the entire annual consumption of all the least developed countries -- is piled up in silos across Ukraine."

On the forthcoming NATO summit in Madrid, Stoltenberg said that a new strategy concept will be adopted "will declare that Russia is no longer a partner, but a threat to our security, peace and stability."

He said that "Russia's nuclear saber rattling is dangerous and irresponsible. Putin must know that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be waged."

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