Hundreds of Ukrainian military personnel from the northeastern city of Kharkiv have been buried at a cemetery on its edge since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year. Joseph Sywenkyj for The Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Journal: 36 Hours in Bakhmut: One Unit’s Desperate Battle to Hold Back the Russians
A group of 16 draftees lost 11 who were killed or captured. Whether it was worth the cost depends on a widely anticipated offensive.
KOSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine—Pvt. Oleksiy Malkovskiy, an unemployed father of three, fired a rocket-propelled grenade for the first time in his life on the front lines of the battle for Bakhmut in February.
Russian troops were assaulting one of the apartment blocks that his group of 16 draftees, many of whom had been enlisted days earlier and given no training, had been assigned to defend.
Malkovskiy missed. The Russians fired their own RPG and hit the wall beside him, leaving him concussed. He ran from the building and hid in a vegetable patch, his ears buzzing. When he returned after sundown, the bodies of two of his comrades lay in the room.
Over the 36 hours he spent in brutal house-to-house combat in the eastern Ukrainian city, 11 of the 16 men from Malkovskiy’s group of draftees were either killed or captured, according to surviving soldiers and relatives of the missing.
Read more ….
Update: Ukraine Sent Poor, Untrained Men Into Bakhmut Meat Grinder to Save Better Forces for Counteroffensive (Antiwar.com)
WNU Editor: It was not only poor and untrained men who were sent into the Bakhmut meat grinder. A lot of professional and trained men were also sent in. A family friend was killed in Bakhmut. He has been involved in the war since the beginning, and he had a lot of training and combat experience. But in the end it did not help him at all.
Update #2: Col. Douglas Macgregor has a must read post on where this war is heading …. After Bakhmut: Russia turned Bakhmut into the graveyard of Ukrainian military power. What comes next? (American Conservative).