Tired of life soldiers in the Ukraine war?
"They're coming at us like zombies"
Created: 11/28/2022, 2:35 p.m
By: Jan-Frederik Wendt
War in Ukraine: Two Ukrainian soldiers stand near the front line (symbolic photo).
© Roman Chop/dpa
For months, the Russian group Wagner has been trying to storm Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
The attackers don't seem to care about their lives for a long time.
Bakhmut - According to Ukrainian soldiers, the insanity of the Russian attack on Ukraine is clearly evident at Bakhmut.
Led by the Wagner mercenary group, Russia has been trying in vain for months to take the city in the Donetsk region - although the city has currently lost its strategic importance in the Ukraine conflict.
Minimal gains in territory contrasted with massive Russian losses.
"With night vision goggles, we can see them coming at us like zombies," Ukrainian soldier Jura tells Finland's
Iltalehti
portal .
Its reporter had visited the Ukrainian defenders in Soledar, a suburb northeast of Bakhmut.
“They just come at us in big groups.
When we start shooting, they don't even try to take cover.
They just keep walking as if in slow motion,” the soldier of the 93rd Motorized Infantry Brigade describes the behavior of the attackers.
War in Ukraine: Russia hardly achieves breakthroughs worth mentioning at Bakhmut
The soldier suspects that the Russian attackers are under the influence of drugs: "Nobody behaves like that.
They don't duck, don't throw themselves down when we shoot - nothing.” However, the large number of attackers is problematic for the Ukrainian armed forces.
"There are more and more of them.
They tried to break through from different directions: from the north from Izyum, then from the direction of Mariupol, now from Popasna,” Wadym Skibitsky, deputy chief of the Ukrainian military intelligence service, told
t-online.de
recently .
According to Skibitsky, it was a costly battle: "But our lines withstood the attacks." In October, even Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted that his troops were barely 200 meters a day from Bakhmut.
They have not been able to achieve any notable breakthroughs since then.
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Nevertheless, day after day the commanders sent new groups of poorly armed or equipped men against the well-fortified positions of the Ukrainians.
In early November, Ukrainian army chief Valeriy Zalushny spoke of up to 80 attacks a day, mostly with simple foot soldiers: "They treat them like disposable soldiers," according to Ukrainian artilleryman Volodymyr in the
Washington Post
.
The victims on the Russian side are above all recently mobilized reservists and prisoners, thousands of whom the Wagner group has recruited from Russian prisons.
(Jan Wendt)
