(A version of this article appeared in The Australian weekend edition, 22/7)

‘We think we’re doing well and moving forward, and that no other force could move faster than us,’  Oleg, 42, a company sergeant major in the Ukrainian Army’s 80^th Air Assault Brigade tells me, dismissing criticisms of slow Ukrainian progress in the current offensive.  ‘taking back 100 meters of our homeland is a big distance too, and it means a lot for Ukraine.’ 

We are at a training facility somewhere west of Bakhmut. This area saw bitter fighting throughout the months of spring, culminating in a declaration of ‘victory’ by the Wagner PMC leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on May 20^th.  Prigozhin, evidently, spoke too soon. Now, the city and its surrounding area are in play once again. And now it is the Ukrainians who are grinding forward, to the south and north of Bakhmut, making gains daily and raising the possibility of an encirclement of  the Russian forces. 

The cost is heavy, tho, and gains are being made only as a result of titanic, daily efforts by the fighters on the ground.  In early July, I spent a week in the company of a number of the units at the cutting edge of the Ukrainian offensive in this area.  ‘Steady gains to both the north and south of the Russian-held town,’ according to a terse statement by British Defence Intelligence issued on July 8, widely quoted in Ukrainian media.  ‘The site of some of the most intense fighting along the front.’  This is what those sentences mean as seen from below. 

The 80^th airborne is one of the units that bore the brunt of the Russian assault in Bakhmut throughout the months of winter and spring.  We met with one of the assault battalions of the unit at a training facility a few kilometers behind the frontline in the Bakhmut region.  The battalion had been taken from the line for a few ‘rest’ days before its next deployment.  Rest, however, for Ukrainian combat units in the summer of 2023, doesn’t have its usual connotation.  The days away from the line are used by the fighters to hone and practice their tactical skills, and by commanders to discuss the enemy’s tactics and formulate and develop responses. 

‘When we’re away from the frontlines, even after one or two days, you start to lose skills,’ Oleksandr, 23, one of the fighters of the 80^th, told us.  ‘so we practice every day.  How to clear trenches, how to clear buildings, how to stand and move correctly.’ 

The 80^th is a long standing unit of the Ukrainian army, tracing its origins back to the first days of Ukrainian independence.  But like other Ukrainian units, it had to quickly expand and take in new fighters when the Russian invasion came.  Oleksandr, like many of the men currently engaged with the 80^th, had no experience of soldiering prior to the war.  ‘I got mobilized, and trained for 40 days,’ he tells me. ‘but the main knowledge I have, I got from the fighting itself, and from my brothers here.’ 

Nazar, a 27 year old former solar panels engineer from the Kyiv area, toyed with a grenade from his pouch as he recalled the details of the bitter, close quarter fighting in Bakhmut. 

“The closest I had was at 10 meters.  They were coming forward with Kalashnikovs.  About 15 people.  I can’t describe the feeling, really.  A lot of adrenaline.  I didn’t even understand what I was doing. 

We fought Wagner, and then some mobilized Russians too.  The Russians would use artillery in the morning, and then Wagner would just come forward.  Many of them died…With Wagner, the feeling was that we’ll kill them, or if they go back, then their own guys will kill them.’ 

Watching the mobilized fighters of the 80^th airborne go through their paces on the training ground, their fluency and confidence with their weapons was obvious.  These young, mobilized civilians, with their minimal training and their immense combat experience are at the brunt of the largest conventional war seen in Europe for 80 years.  For Ukraine, and perhaps for Europe too, everything hangs on their ability, and the ability of thousands of others like them, to hold fast and keep moving forward. 

Currently, in the Bakhmut fighting, the role of artillery is crucial, as the Ukrainians seek to soften up the Russian positions before sending their infantry and armour forward.  To the north and south of the city, Ukrainian gunners daily pound the Russian positions.  Villages like Klischiivka to Bakhmut’s immediate south have become crucial targets, offering control of the high ground above the city.   The Russians are proving no less tenacious in defense as the Ukrainians showed themselves to be last year, in the early months of the invasion. 

 The Ukrainian gun positions are well hidden in wooded areas, concealed from the attentions of Russian drones.  The gunners’ dug outs are a small distance away, dank, stifling and concealed under the earth.  The moments of vulnerability come when the gun crews must make it from one to the other, sprinting across the  open ground to reach the gun position and begin their work. 

At an L119 howitzer position of the 80^th brigade, outside Kostyantynivka, south west of Bakhmut, the mood was nevertheless optimistic.  Like their infantry comrades, these men are relative newcomers to their trade.  They have similarly had the chance to learn fast, through practical experience.  The  British-made L119 has been on the Ukrainian battlefield since late last year.  It is a light, towed weapon, in keeping with the airmobile composition of the 80^th Brigade.  The crew operating the howitzer were part of one of the brigade’s mortar platoons prior to the war.  A short training period ‘maximum one month -maybe even less, and maybe its enough because then we get more experience in the practical context,’  Andrey, 33, one of the gun crew, told us, and they were thrown into the Bakhmut fight. 

We watched as the gunners blazed away on the L119, firing volley after volley of shells beneath the heat of the mid-day sun.  Seeking to batter open the gateway eastwards.  Andrey, on one knee a little behind the gun, receiving the coordinates from further forward. Oleg, 34, the commander, adjusting the range accordingly, and the crew keeping up the pace of the fire.  ‘There’s a need to be very precise, and to maintain very good communications, because the forces are bunched up there together – to avoid some terrible mistake.’ 

Here, at least, there appeared little doubt regarding the nature of the offensive, and its pace.  ‘The command are trying to minimize casualties,’ said Oleg, 34, the gun commander. ‘So that’s why we’re doing it step by step.’  Little doubt either, regarding the centrality of their task.  ‘Its on us.  We know that.  We’re responsible for the success of it.  And that’s all.’  Each day, from the dug out to the gun emplacement,  pounding away at the Russian defenses. 

Further ahead, around Klishchiivka and Chasiv Yar, clashes are taking place daily, with heavy casualties on both sides.    

At a casualty clearing station somewhere close to the frontlines, we witnessed close up the efforts of the Ukrainian medical teams to fight for the lives of wounded soldiers.  The ‘stabilization point’ was located in an anonymous looking building in an otherwise deserted village.  This is one of the sites where soldiers wounded in battle receive their first, vital medical attention, before, if they survive, being transported further on to the hospital in Druzhkivka.   The station is under the command of the 5^th Assault Brigade, a Ukrainian Army formation assembled at the beginning of the 2022 invasion. 

Dimitri, 40, a former surgeon from Kyiv, is the commander of the station.  He was running a company doing clinical trials in the years preceding 2022.  He volunteered for the army in the first days of the war, when the Russians were menacing the Ukrainian capital. 

“Our job here is mainly to stabilize injuries and most importantly to control bleeding.  We do re-animation if necessary, and then we move soldiers to the hospital.”

And surgery?  “Surgery in these conditions is impossible.  Theres no electricity in the city.  Everything’s run by generators. But we have all the necessary materials and medicines for controlling bleeding.  We can have anywhere between 15 and 120 cases in a day.  2-4% of them are bullet wounds.  Lots of shrapnel wounds, concussions, mine wounds. Some cases of chemical weapons, though no fatalities from that yet.”

The atmosphere inside the station is close and oppressive. The necessity for security means that no daylight gets in.  So even in the middle of the day, light is maintained by a few flickering bulbs.  This  creates an eerie, slightly out of time atmosphere, which the thick walls with their peeling whitewash and the 1950s long corridors help along. 

Margarita, 27, from Poltava, is one of Dimitri’s team at the station.  A dentist by training, she was in the middle of her internship when the war broke out and joined the army in the first days.  It’s a quiet afternoon at the station when we arrive, and there is time for talking.

“I was worried about my relations, my friends and parents, so I decided I could be more useful here.  I didn’t have a husband, or kids, so why not?  First I was in Kyiv. The brigade was forming.  And from summer last year, I’m in the Donetsk region, with the brigade.” 

As we are speaking, information comes in that  a badly wounded casualty is being brought to the station. The slow afternoon atmosphere abruptly changes.  A minute or so later, a light armored vehicle parks outside, and the team rush to bring in the wounded man.

 The soldier, a well-muscled young man with his body covered in tattoos, is swiftly stretchered in and placed on the operating table.  His uniform taken off, several holes are apparent in his back and upper thighs. Shrapnel wounds. The team, Margarita, Dimitri and the others swiftly set to work.  The young man is half-conscious, moaning.  Monitoring equipment is placed on his chest.  There is tension in the dank air as the work progresses.  Hardly any talking.  About ten people gathered around the operating table, in the half light of a single bulb, and the young man’s body attached to a welter of tubes and wires. and then, gradually, the tension lifts.  The bleeding has been stalled, the situation stabilised.  The soldier, within a few minutes, is back in the vehicle and on his way to the hospital in Druzhkivka. 

The quiet and calm slowly return.  “Everything’s challenging,” Margarita told us before we left.  “but most of all, the psychological side.  You see all these very young men, injured, sometimes shaking and lashing out, and they’re so very young, to find themselves in that state.”

On the road, further south, we saw the body of a Russian soldier.  It looked like it had been there for a while, the flesh almost disappeared, the skull with a thin film of skin turned brown in the sun stretched over it, and a gaping hole in the top of the head.  His weapon gone.  The sad remnants of a Russian uniform and webbing still on his body, and his legs twisted in that curious, un-natural angle that one sometimes sees in corpses on battlefields. 

This is the Ukraine counter offensive, from the Bakhmut front, close up.  Mobilized civilians, high morale, good organization.  Forward motion, yes, but grinding  and slow and at a heavy cost.  The breakthrough cannot come too quickly for the young Ukrainians that crew the armies of President Volodymyr Zelensky and General Valery Zaluzhny.  Perhaps the real hammer blow lies ahead, and perhaps it will come, somewhere on the 1200 km frontline, before the end of summer.  In the meantime, the 80^th airborne brigade are on their way back to the frontline in Bakhmut, the direction is forward, and the guns begin each morning.