A Blog by Jonathan Low

 

Apr 24, 2023

Bakhmut Fighting Increasingly Close Range, Hand-To- Hand

The battle is increasingly being fought with grenades, rifles, knives, shovels and anything else at hand. JL 

Alia Shoaib reports in Business Insider:

Video filmed by soldiers from a renowned volunteer battalion the "Da Vinci Wolves," a part of the 67th Mechanized Brigade, shows the realities of WWI-style trench warfare, which has become a feature of the bloody fighting. The video, filmed on a camera attached to a helmet shows Ukrainian soldiers dodging grenades and fighting Russian soldiers in close-combat. The intimacy of the close quarter fighting is captured when "Tihiy" shouts, amid a series of explosions, to the Russians, in a nearby trench: "What's up orcs? It's our field, fuck off."

A dramatic video shows Ukrainian soldiers dodging grenades and fighting Russian soldiers in close-combat as they defend the last road to Bakhmut.

The video, filmed by soldiers from a renowned volunteer battalion called the "Da Vinci Wolves," shows the realities of WWI-style trench warfare, which has become a feature of the bloody fighting to control eastern Ukrainian city.

In the video, filmed on a camera attached to a helmet, a soldier can be seen crossing a barren no man's land before taking shelter in a dugout with a group of other soldiers. 

A body of a dead Ukrainian soldier is also lying in the shelter. A voice on the recording is heard to say: "Fuck, one more than. He is dead. Rest in peace. Yes, brother that is how war is."

Moments later, the trench is struck by a massive explosion, knocking down the soldier who was the closest soldier to the entrance.

"Lekha, are you okay? Lekha, are you alive?" one soldier asks, and his comrade gives him a thumbs up in response.

Soon, the soldiers receive a radio message that "orcs jumped into our trenches," using a common derogatory nickname that Ukraine uses for their Russian invaders. The soldiers emerge from the dugout and an intense firefight ensues, with artillery shells exploding at several points.

At one point, a nearby Russian soldier throws a grenade at the trench, and Ukrainian soldiers respond with sustained gunfire.

More Russian soldiers can be seen crawling away on the other side of the trench, and Ukrainian troops continue with the onslaught. 

Russian soldier can be seen rolling on the ground, appearing injured as smoke billows around him.

Much of the rest of the video, around 11 minutes long, shows Ukrainian soldiers continuing to spot and target Russian soldiers amid a war-scarred landscape of splintered trees and bomb craters.

"I've killed all orcs," one of the Ukrainian soldiers says.

The video has over 1.7 million views. Comments are full of praise for the squad leader, with the call sign "Tihiy."

"Good leader. Gets his men out to fight, steadies and calm them down, gives them info, clear, short orders, places his men, gives them firing arcs, and willing to do what he demand from his men,"says one tweet.

The intimacy of the close quarter fighting is captured when "Tihiy" shouts, amid a series of explosions, to the Russians, in a nearby trench: "What's up orcs? It's our field, fuck off."

Moscow claims to occupy most of Bakhmut, but Ukraine still holds a vital road connecting the city to nearby Chasiv Yar.

This road, dubbed the "road of life," is critical for Ukraine to transport troops and supplies.

The "Da Vinci Wolves" is a battlaion of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, a military wing of the Ukrainian nationalist movement the Right Sector that has been intergrated into the Ukrainian Army, according to The Kyiv Independent.

The battlaion is part of the 67th Separate Mechanized Brigade.

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