This city has resisted Russia for months.

June 4: “Failed ground attack in the Bakhmut region”; 1 August: “Russia makes little progress on Bakhmut”; November 24: “The Russian offensive on Bakhmut continues”. Similar reports from month to month – news: Bachmut has not fallen yet.

The Ukrainian city with a population of about 70,000 has been on the front line in Donbass, in the east of the country, since May. It has been uninterruptedly besieged by Russia since August, and hardly any place in Ukraine has been so strongly fortified. Kyiv still prevails, but in the battle for supplies everything depends on supplies.

Since the spring, tens of thousands of soldiers from both sides have fought here, and the death toll is in the thousands. No one knows exactly how many there are.

Countless corpses of Russian troops can be seen in recent drone footage from the Greater Bakhmut area. They lie in temporarily dug trenches, sometimes singly, sometimes in small groups. The entire area is covered with craters. Austrian Armed Forces Colonel Markus Reisner said live on ZDF today:

“The conflict is constant,” reports Maks, a Ukrainian soldier who has been serving in the Bakhmut region for more than two months, ZDFtoday. “Especially the artillery works constantly, clashes with pistols are rare. It is difficult to say how many casualties per day, but there are many.”

Maks is an IT technician and supports drone pilots who monitor the battlefield, throw grenades and report Russian positions to artillery. Their guns are responsible for most of the later murders.

A number of Western weapon systems, the M777, M109 or the German Panzerhaubitze 2000, are in constant use at Bachmut. When spare parts run out or weapons aren’t repaired fast enough, the balance of power can quickly turn in Russia’s favour.

“Bild” reporter Björn Stritzel has reported on Bachmut several times, most recently in November. “There I saw Russian soldiers trying to enter the outskirts of the city even in broad daylight, and then the Ukrainian defenders came under machine-gun fire.”

On the Ukrainian side, too, Stritzel told ZDFheute that field hospitals are always full – with people injured almost exclusively by artillery and mortar fire.

Bakhmut is located in Donetsk province, barely 20 kilometers from the border of the separatist republics. Since the invasion began, Russia has advanced only a few kilometers. A strategically important rail line feeds the town.

With each passing month, the importance of Bakhmut increases. Not for military reasons, but for the morale of Ukraine. Russia’s efforts to conquer all of Donbass and thus realize an important war goal must be stopped here. On social media, images and stories of suffering and heroism in Bakhmut reliably draw attention to Ukrainian propaganda.

Losing the ground after such a long time would be an emotional setback and endanger the nearby Donbass cities Kramatorsk and Slowiansk. Ukraine has prepared more defensive lines behind Bakhmut. Conversely, the Ukrainian defense engaged Russian forces, contributing to the successful offensive further north at Izyum and Lyman in September and October.