HAUNTING video shows the devastation in the frontline town of Bakhmut, which has been pulverized by Russian forces.
Ukrainian forces have been engaged in house-to-house battles with Vladimir Putin’s forces, with the Wagner Group of mercenaries at their spearhead of their offensive.
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The mercenaries have been thrown into mass attacks and have suffered enormous casualties in the “meat grinder” battlefield, a year after the Russian invasion.
Meanwhile the outnumbered Ukrainians are being pounded in the town, much of which now resembles an apocalyptic wasteland.
Bakhmut, which once had a population of 70,000, now has just 5,000 people remaining in desperate conditions.
In other footage, Kyiv’s troops can be seen fighting for each house in brutal close quarter conflict with the Russians.
One Ukrainian officer described the “difficult situation” facing his troops in the town.
“We are fighting for every metre, every house, every street here,” the captain told The Times.
“The task is getting worse now that the Russians can hit that remaining road.”
“Our infantry is fighting with the savagery of animals and strength of titans.
“But whatever their courage in face-to-face fighting, we haven’t got an answer to being pounded day and night by artillery.”
Another soldier who allowed himself to be identified only by his code name, Expert, said the pulverized city in the Donbas’ Donetsk region has become a “stronghold ” for Ukraine.
“See what they have done to it?” he said of Russian forces that have been pounding Bakhmut for months.
Founder of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed his forces captured the village of Yahidne, just north of Bakhmut, on Saturday.
But Ukrainian military reports issued a day after the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion, suggested that villages near the key town remained under Kyiv’s control.
Wagner Group has suffered more than 30,000 casualties, most of them convicts, since the invasion began a year ago, says US intelligence.
Some 9,000 of those have been killed in action and half are believed to have died since mid-December, when fighting intensified around Bakhmut.
Wagner’s heavy losses, prompting Prigozhin to complain bitterly that the Russian defence establishment has failed to properly acknowledge their contribution.
This week he even accused the army top brass of treason for failing to supply his men with sufficient ammunition.
By defending their ruins, Ukrainian forces are slowing costly Russian offensive efforts to extend Moscow’s control over the entirety of eastern Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region.
That’s become Putin’s revised target for conquest after his forces were beaten back from the capital, Kyiv, and northern Ukraine in the invasion’s opening stage a year ago.
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