Fighting continues for the city of Artemovsk.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
“On soft paws”
– Commander, we went in, this “nine” (nine-story building. – Auth.) Is ours! – the attack aircraft operating in the western quarters of Artemovsk report via communication.
Over the past week, the fighters of the PMC “Wagner” have managed to make significant progress in the city, overcoming the psychological defensive line that passed along the railroad. Our units took the railway station and moved on, pushing the enemy to the borders of the city. In parallel with this, gradually squeezing pincers from the north and south, and cutting supply lines.
The most difficult combat area is a multi-storey building.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
One of them, near the village of Khromovo, managed to be taken under physical control, but Kyiv still has the theoretical opportunity to enter the city through the village of Krasnoye and along field roads. Theoretical, because in practice all logistical routes are covered by our artillery, and in the fields due to the rains that poured in the Donbass, this is another stage of impassable thaw.
– You guys are the best! I’m proud of you! – the middle-aged platoon commander answers on the radio.
– Thank you for the kind words, Commander, – the frank radio exchange continues, not in a military way. – There are civilians. They are in the basement. And in the next “nine” is also “peace”, how to go there? How to work with an RPG (hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher. – Auth.)?
Photo: Alexander KOTS
– Come carefully, on soft paws. Peaceful people in the basement, we will take them out at night.
The day before, our fighters took out several residents of Bakhmut from the combat area, who had been living in basements for several months. Enemy artillery worked in the evacuation group, the soldiers suffered losses, including those killed. It was possible to bring civilians to the safe zone of all. Not a single one was injured. This is about the latest scandal with a foreign agent who fled from Russia, who blackmailed an ex-employee of the PMC to tell how he and his colleagues allegedly dealt with the civilian population of Artemovsk.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
“We haven’t even heard about this scandal here,” the platoon leader admits.
– Listen, well, here’s the situation: you storm the house, and there are civilians. How to act in such a situation?
“The most important thing for us is to save their lives. We work extremely carefully, approach, find out if the enemy is hiding behind their backs, and try to destroy them pointwise. You ask the civilians yourself – this is the best answer to all stuffing and scandals.
Residents of Artemovsk live in basements.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
“We were called “waiters”
In the first-aid post, equipped in the basement of a destroyed house, there are a dozen and a half people of different ages. Just taken out of the war zone.
– Oh, maybe they will show me on TV, my daughter will see, she will know that she is alive, – one woman comes up. – Our five-story building burned down, but we all remained alive. Well, it all happened in the morning, not in the evening. There were 14 of us in the basement.
– And above the Nazis. Shooting like this is scary. The walls are shaking. Here are your lads, well done, – another woman supports.
– Thanks to the Wagners, – a man passes by.
– Don’t go out yourself?
– No, they (the Armed Forces of Ukraine) are shooting at people, they are on the drum. You can’t get out on foot, or by car – they would have shot with her.
Residents of the city did not evacuate to Ukraine – all relatives are in Russia.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
– And there was no evacuation on that Ukrainian side?
– I didn’t want to go there. I don’t have anyone there, I don’t know anyone there. And to be homeless – so I’m better off in Russia. There’s an aunt, a brother, a sister…
Doctors carry tea, Easter cakes left after Easter. Among the rescued – 62-year-old Vitaly. In Soviet times, he served “urgent” in Odintsovo, near Moscow. There he met his wife, brought him to Artemovsk. She managed to leave for her sister, and Vitaly remained to guard the household. But everything acquired burned down, there is nothing more to hold on to.
– In Pavlovsky Posad there is an older brother of his wife, – says a man with a dried face and sunken, but clear eyes. – Maybe to him. In the Moscow region, it seems, and it is easier with work.
Why didn’t you go to the Ukrainian side?
– I’m Russian, my dad is from Orel. He came here to work, met my mother, and I was born here. You know what I would like to say, even though I am a small person. Russia needs to be united. Then it will be a force, a world power.
A first-aid post was organized in one of the basements.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
In the next “room” to young doctors, a more experienced colleague gives a lecture on the use of painkillers. Out of ignorance, narcotic analgesics can kill. The guys listen carefully to the analysis on specific examples.
– Constant shelling. For 7-8 months we were in the basement, – says meanwhile another refugee Vitaly Ponomarenko. – The Ukrainian military constantly came in and out of our house. They set fire to our five-story building, and then rejoiced in the street, jumped, took pictures against the backdrop of the burning building. I don’t know why they did it, we must have been smoked out. All things were on fire. Why do we need them? We moved to a nine-story building, to the basement. They set her on fire too.
– How were the Russians met?
– Very good, because we waited a long time. We will continue to try to go to Staraya Russa, godfathers live there.
– The Ukrainian authorities did not call to be evacuated?
– They said: “Well, waiters (this is the pejorative name for Russians who are waiting for liberation from Ukrainian occupation)? Won’t you go?” Where are we going? Who needs us there?
Moving around the city where the fighting is going on is not easy.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
Fire from all calibers
From a cozy basement we “emerge” into the harsh combat reality. The most important thing in Artemovsk is movement. You can’t stop here for long periods of time. You have to constantly move, so that even if you are “copied” by drones from the air, do not leave the enemy the opportunity to direct artillery. All movements – courtyards, under the walls of houses. In open spaces – running. You can’t tell by the escorts whether their sense of danger has become dulled, or whether they, in a rumbling cacophony, accurately catch the notes that sing about what is not flying over us. And the closer to the war zone, the more instruments in this thundering orchestra.
“The enemy is trying to resist, but all our units have fallen on this bear and we are twisting his paws,” the platoon commander comments. – We are moving quickly, at lightning speed, changes in the situation and geography occur every hour. It is difficult to work in high-rise buildings, we had to slightly change tactics.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
– How many percent of the city is controlled by the enemy?
– About 20. But this number is decreasing every day. We have changed the course of the battle, we are attacking from all sides, the enemy defense is bursting at the seams. They bring in new people from the reserve in the dark, leave them in residential buildings that are not adapted for defense. We come: “Good morning, you are already in Russia.” Where they are, they do not understand. Where are their own, where are strangers – too. The command tells them to stand to the death and hold on, ammunition is not always brought up, and the enemy rolls back under our pressure. Sometimes it just runs away.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
Another discipline that needs to be mastered in Artemovsk is orienteering in high-rise buildings. In this reality, distorted by large-caliber artillery, it is sometimes impossible to get, for example, to the 9th floor of the 2nd entrance through, in fact, the 2nd entrance. You go to the 5th, go up to the 8th floor, through the broken apartments and the passages broken in the walls you move to the 4th, go down to the 3rd floor, again along the corridors and breaks you get to the 3rd entrance, stomp, promising yourself to go in for sports, on 8th floor, crawl between concrete slabs to the next stairwell, one flight up – voila, you’re there!
Photo: Alexander KOTS
And in place – a hefty DShK machine gun. And an old acquaintance whom I met a couple of days ago in another high-rise building with the same piece of iron. I can imagine how he moves around the positions with a large-caliber apparatus every day, and becomes a little ashamed of his momentary cowardice. A growing whistle and a shaking explosion somewhere from the end of the building brings me out of a state of melancholy.
“Yes, they are just firing on duty,” the machine gunner explains. And one more “bang!” lays down nearby. – This is 120 mm (ammunition. – Auth.).
From the window you can see the same nine-story buildings that our guys are now storming. They are in dense smoke.
– Work on the five-story building on the right, the upper near corner, – the radio prompts.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
The machine gunner blasts the twilight of the stairwell with short bursts of flashes, disturbed plaster is pouring from the ceiling. In a confined space, the deafening sound has nowhere to go, and you thank the inventor of active headphones that dampen the impact on the eardrums.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
Passing upstairs are guys with anti-tank installations. I follow them.
“These nine-story buildings are already ours,” one of the fighters shows me on the roof. – Everything behind them is still controlled by the enemy. But this is not for long. If shelling, we run here.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
While the “musicians” are choosing a position, without pressing the stop button, I shoot a panorama of the battle. Glowing projectiles fly from one end of the city to the other, drowning in thick smoke. Ukrainian artillery is already hitting the recaptured “nine”. On the left, like a whip, a single sniper snaps. To the right, a rocket roars like an airplane, bursting into explosions somewhere in the private sector.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
Photo: Alexander KOTS
– To the left of the “nine”, the landmark is white smoke, let’s go three there, – the command comes.
Assessing the distance, the fighters choose the Metis anti-tank complex.
– Shot! – I see off an objective rocket, which, after a few seconds, bursts right in the center of the landmark.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
I turn the camera, the installation is already loaded with the second number: “Shot!” Behind him is another one, and the fighters are instantly removed from their position, hiding in the attic span. I dive after them, sliding down to the second floor and running into a brick blockage. Somewhere I missed a turn in this multi-story labyrinth. One of the escorts comes to the rescue and leads them out into the street with “sinusoids”. It is already getting dark, and we stay overnight in our positions. And in the morning we were surprised to learn that, according to one of the experts, Artemovsk is in our complete environment.
“But the men don’t know,” the comrade states with a grin. And I remember that even from Slavyansk, which was blocked from all sides in 2014, I managed to get through the fields to Donetsk and back. This experience is enough to be skeptical about statements about “the only supply route for Artemovsk accessible to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” The enemy does not even hint at the fact that he is going to retreat from the city. And the rotation is carried out even on foot. Perhaps there will be no encirclement of the city at all, just the enemy will be squeezed out of Bakhmut beyond its borders. But before that, our attack aircraft will have to take the most powerful fortified area in the western part of the city, located among the once most densely populated multi-storey buildings.
