"Brigades come and go, but we are here all the time." How fighters in a Territorial Defence Force battalion defend their native Bakhmut

The main forces of the Russian occupying army descended on the outskirts of Bakhmut.

The Russian president demanded that the city be captured by 22 June last year. The "deadline" was then postponed several times.

Bakhmut has become the biggest challenge for the Russian military leadership. The attempt to take this city has already cost the lives of many thousands of Russian soldiers and mercenaries, but the Ukrainian army still controls it.

The Great Battles project continues the story of the Ukrainian patriots of Donbas - residents of the Donetsk region who have been fighting the invaders from the first days of the war in the ranks of the Bakhmut Territorial Defence battalion.

We are heading to Bakhmut again from Kostiantynivka. This road is now the main artery that connects the fortress city with the rest of Donetsk Oblast. The road, which was completely repaired two years ago, has now changed enormously – it is blocked by checkpoints and defensive structures in many places.

Fierce battles are already taking place a few kilometres to the east of the road. Russian soldiers are advancing to cut the supply routes of Ukraine's defence forces on the Bakhmut front and to encircle the city.

Everything around the city is in a constant flurry. Tanks and armoured vehicles "fly" along the road.

Black streaks cross the sky near the hill – these are Ukrainian rockets working against the Russian army. There is an explosion in the sky almost above us. A Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile was fired at a Russian attack aircraft, which starts to smoke but manages to turn around and fly towards the territory occupied by the Russians.

The hard work of the Ukrainian defenders does not stop even for a minute. It is as if we were inside a huge machine that is methodically crushing hordes of invaders.

Three "second birthdays" in a year

"I was lying under that slab", a sergeant of the Bakhmut battalion of the Territorial Defence Forces who goes by "Swedish" points to the concrete floor. It came down on top of his bed after a rocket hit the house where their unit was stationed.

We are standing near a four-storey dormitory, one of the entrances to which has turned into a pile of bricks and concrete debris. Swedish tells us how he returned from the hospital after a concussion received in battle and soon found himself in the hospital again.

"I started my shift. The duty officer let me rest a little at midnight. I came to an empty bedroom on the first floor and lay down on the net of a bunk bed.

It's good that I didn't fall asleep, as around 00.30 the first rocket hit, 30 metres from the building. Literally, in 10 seconds, a second rocket arrived, coming exactly at us. It's good that I managed to regroup after the first explosion. The concrete slabs fell and I found myself stuck between two armoured meshes.

I was lucky that I moved a little to the side; the slab came right where my head could have been. The guy in the bed nearly died.

He remembers how he spent long hours suffocating under the rubble, as he could not move and was gasping for air. How he tried to shout when he heard the voices of the rescue workers, but his mouth was stuffed with clay and it became even more difficult to breathe.

"I shouted only one thing, 'Air!'" Swedish recalls. "I wanted them to understand where my head was. It was important to me that they did not dig out my legs, but that they gave me access to air as soon as possible. So, when rescue workers had almost dug me out, they were shouting something at me. The last thing I remember is a clear realisation: they won't make it." Swedish makes a dramatic pause and smiles. "And then they saved me."

When he regained consciousness, he was already in hospital. Swedish refers to this as his third "second birthday" this year. The first happened in the summer east of Bakhmut.

"Then we came face to face with the Wagner mercenaries and won that battle. There were 28 of us. For most of the boys, it was their first battle, but we left 25 mercenaries on the approaches to our positions.

The second was on 10 August. At another stronghold near Bakhmut, his unit came under shelling, which went on non-stop for 12 hours. There were both dead and wounded.

"My brother died 5 metres from me from a direct hit by a projectile. I was concussed then, I could not understand what was happening. I saw his legs behind the bend of the trench and I talked to him for another half an hour, not realising that his legs were the only thing left of him", recalls the sergeant of the Bakhmut battalion of the Territorial Defence Forces.

"If you think rationally, our chances of survival were much less than the chances of dying. But we survived. And this is the impact of the rocket…" he points to a seven-metre crater right under the foundations of the destroyed building. "The fact that I remained alive is sheer luck."

It really seems like a miracle: when Swedish was taken out from under the rubble, other than several wounds, he had no major injuries, just bruises. When he regained consciousness in hospital, he immediately found a vehicle that was passing by, and within a few hours he was back at their location, helping to sort out the debris.

"I was never made to feel I was 'just a girl'"

Our next interlocutor took the alias "Freyja". Iryna used to be the head of the Luhansk Oblast trade union for the Housing and Utilities Service, an entrepreneur and an expert with the Ukrainian-Swiss "Decide" project.

She was born in Siversk but lived most of her life in Lysychansk. She considers this city her home, and she has the warmest memories of it. In particular, her daughter was born there.

"Many people said that Lysychansk was a depressing city, but I always proved by my example that even in such a city you can find a decent job and develop yourself and the hromada [an administrative unit designating a town and its adjacent territories – ed.]", says Iryna.

She heard the news about the beginning of the full-scale war there.

"We woke up at 05:00, because everyone was calling to inform each other that the war had started. At 07:00, I was dressed to go to the Military Commissariat. There were queues everywhere; everyone was in a hurry, everyone was scared. People were standing in line at ATMs, at shops. It was almost impossible to get a taxi or a bus."

The Lysychansk Military Commissariat told her that "they don't need girls".

"I was upset as I wanted to defend my city."

Freyja never considered the possibility of not joining the army. She went to see her parents in Siversk first, and then, on 26 February, with all her belongings and her brother's bulletproof vest, she was standing at the threshold of the assembly centre in Bakhmut.

"I made this decision long before the full-scale war. First of all, my brother has been fighting since 2015. Second, my daughter is studying at a military institute. It is scary when your child is in a place where fighting is going on, and you are still in a more or less peaceful city. I couldn’t stand it. That is why it was never open to discussion. I did not see myself doing anything else in such a situation. I could not do it any other way.

Freyja says that her daughter accepted this decision calmly. She had no doubt that her mother would do what she planned.

Iryna was initially offered the position of clerk in the battalion of Ukraine's Territorial Defence Forces, but she resolutely refused.

"They were surprised. They asked me 'Do you want to shoot?' Yes, I answered, I want to shoot. I enrolled in a rifle company. I was very lucky with my company. It was formed in the first days [of the war – ed], when no one had been mobilised yet, so everyone there was a volunteer. And everyone was on the same page."

At the beginning of the summer, the company got an automatic grenade launcher, the most powerful weapon of the battalion. So the company turned from being a rifle unit into a fire support company. Freyja quickly mastered the profession of gunner.

 "An AGL is really cool!" Iryna says. "A powerful weapon! It was love at first sight."

Freyja well remembers her first combat sortie with a grenade launcher. We were able to stop a Russian offensive operation from the Lysychansk front at that time. When she saw the invaders, Freyja says, she felt a rush of adrenaline; it was essential to act quickly and in a coordinated manner.

"We attacked them with direct fire from a distance of about 300 metres. We did it very well. We not only killed their manpower, but we knocked out the armoured personnel carrier as well. I couldn't hold back my emotions and went out to the field to have a look, when the vehicle caught fire and soldiers started jumping out of it. I needed to see it! The guys had to drag me back into the trench", laughs Iryna.

But she was left without the AGL in September. The entire military unit was wounded and the grenade launcher was destroyed by Russian artillery in one of the heavy battles.

"They started to fire at our unit with artillery as soon as we entered our position. And it lasted all day without a break. The AGL is powerless against guns. There were no shooting battles at the time when I was evacuated after being wounded."

Almost three dozen of her comrades were wounded, and the company commander and six other soldiers were killed while covering their unit. Freyja recalls the company commander with sadness. She says he taught her and their entire unit everything they know now, and he had also become a true friend.

"Bakhmut has become a special place for me now, as we lost many of our friends here. This city hurts me. It hurts a lot. And, despite the fact that the Russians brought a lot of ‘cannon fodder’ here, I think that we will hold Bakhmut. We must hold it."

Quite a few women serve in Ukraine's Territorial Defence Forces in the city of Bakhmut.

"I have never encountered any special attitude towards me because ‘you are a girl’. We have always been one family. There was just one time when the guys wanted so much to please me that they made me a shower, when we took up a position known as "Lisnyk" (the term refers to a forest ranger). This is the first time I had my own shower on a combat mission. And I was very angry when the Russians destroyed that shower. I thought, ‘I'm going to kill them all now!’" laughs Freyja, joking about the "girlish" motivation to fight.

The fact is, Iryna has no lack of motivation. She strove to protect her native Lysychansk, and then to take revenge for her city. And now she demands that the Russians pay for her fallen comrades. She is sure that she will return to the liberated Lysychansk:

"But I watch videos made by local collaborators and realise that I will never live there again. I will not be able to anymore. I don't want to live next door to those who waved the Russian tricolour. And my house has been destroyed, so I have no place to stay. But I need to enter Lysychansk and walk its streets." When Iryna recalls her hometown, her eyes glow with a warm light.

She admits she has kept a personal diary since she was a teenager. She had stopped keeping it, but she began to write down her thoughts again when she was serving in the battalion:

"In particular, I wrote there that I have never laughed as much as during the war. The atmosphere is friendly, we try to support each other with jokes, warm stories, and some funny things. We laugh a lot. Maybe this is a protective reaction, but it is definitely not hysterical", Freyja smiles.

Valentyna is another female warrior. She is a primary school teacher from Toretsk, but has been living in Bakhmut for the past nine years, working in one of the local schools. She came to the Military Commissariat on 25 February.

"I couldn't stay away", she explains her choice. "I had stayed away for eight years. That is why I decided to go this time. I used to help as a volunteer, but I realised now that it's time for me to take part."

Colleagues and the school management treated her decision with understanding and respect. Students as well as their parents found out about it very recently, when a mother of one of Valentyna's students brought humanitarian aid to the unit and was very surprised to see her in a military uniform. Children and their parents are constantly in touch [with the teacher – ed] now. They support her, worry about her and exchange greetings during the holidays. 

"I read this with pain", shares Valentyna. "Why? Because I miss them."

She looks calm and composed. She doesn't like to talk about herself, so there is a certain sharpness in her answers. Especially when it comes to her transformation into a military woman.

"Why should I tell everyone about it? Who needs it, they know. And everything else is mine, personal. Why should I boast about the fact that I started to serve?"

The fact that her son, a professional military officer who is currently being treated after having been wounded, approved her decision is enough for her.

"He said: 'I expected nothing less from you, mother.’ But when I am working, he is very worried. We try to keep in touch. He is doing his job, and I am doing mine. Sometimes he gives me a cue, and his cues help. The son is proud of me. As I was proud of my son when he first went to defend his motherland", Valentyna reminisces. 

The school where Valentyna was working was the only educational institution in Bakhmut that had not yet been destroyed by Russian artillery at the time of our interview. 

Valentyna hopes that the war will end soon with our victory, and she will be back to her favourite job in the school that had just recently been renovated. And in order for that to happen faster, she has taken on a new speciality and is now serving as a combat medic. 

"We have to go and write our history ourselves. No one will do this for us"

"Here it is, my School No. 7. I had been working here for eight years. Everything is damaged…", Oleksandr, another soldier of the Bakhmut battalion of the Territorial Defence Forces tells us. 

The school where the soldier who goes by "Zavuch" [Ukrainian for deputy head teacher – ed.] used to work as a deputy head teacher was less fortunate than Valentyna’s school. It glistens with shattered glass and its walls and roof have been reduced to ruin by fragments of projectiles. 

Zavuch gives us an original tour of the places where he spent his childhood and adolescence.

This is a sad tour, as the city has been very much destroyed, and favourite places have been damaged by Russian shells. There are metres-wide craters from aerial bombs, and several entrances collapsed after missile strikes. There is now a twisted wreck full of ashes where there once was a crowded central market.   

"This destroyed building was the cafeteria of the teachers’ college where I graduated from back in 2005. I studied here for two years. Then I enrolled in Kharkiv National Pedagogical University. I worked at a school in Opytne and in 2012 I transferred here, to School No. 7. Here, on the third floor, you see? There was my classroom, a history class," Oleksandr points at windows without glass, with their plastic frames broken. 

"How sad it is to look at the broken walls of your 'home'. Everything here was green once, refined. And now it is all in ruins. This is what a war brings – nothing but destruction, pain and suffering. This building survived the German Nazi siege. But it did not survive the war with our insane northern neighbour", he adds.

Oleksandr has taken the alias "Zavuch". He is an intelligent 40-year-old man who speaks quietly, cleanly and in the cadences typical of a teacher. He is nothing like a soldier superhero in Hollywood films. Ammunition and weapons do not naturally suit him. Nevertheless, he is in charge of one of the most efficient mortar units on this area of the front. 

Even though he was preparing to join the army in the event of a Russian invasion, he joined a battalion of the Territorial Defence Forces only on 11 March 2022, since, as deputy head teacher, he first had to wrap up everything at the school. 

Oleksandr moved his family out of the city because he would not be able to focus while serving in trenches if he knew they were in danger. Most of his students have also left Bakhmut, but they keep studying remotely. They text him that they miss him and dream of coming back home to their school as soon as possible.

"What do I feel, standing near the ruins of my school? Pain and sadness. There was laughter and childhood here. Nine months ago, children were running around this yard. Boys were working out on these pull-up bars. See these shattered plastic windows – all this had been built with the money of volunteers, philanthropists, and parents. And now it hurts to see all this destroyed", Oleksandr says.

Oleksandr tells us that many Bakhmut residents went to defend their country in February 2022. Some joined the army, others are helping soldiers however they can. His teaching staff built checkpoints on the outskirts of the city, set up positions and collected everything necessary for the local territorial defence units, "because no one wants to feed the enemy army".

"It is interesting to know that when I started working here, this golden birch tree was no more than two metres tall. And now, look how beautiful it is, around 30 metres tall. It will soon outgrow the school. The late vocational training teacher, Borys Ivanovych, planted it," Oleksandr stops us near a destroyed school workshop and points out the tall tree.

Suddenly, a UAV starts hovering over us. We take a few seconds to establish whether it is ours or not, and whether it is a threat. Then, we see its operator in a Ukrainian uniform nearby, breathe a sigh of relief and continue the "tour" of the ruins of Bakhmut.

"This building is an industrial college. It suffered from several airstrikes. This is the former court building, which later became a branch of the Horlivka Institute of Foreign Languages; an air-launched missile hit it. And there was a missile strike here – a house collapsed right away. This is our ‘toptalovka’, a central park where we had all sorts of festive events, graduation ceremonies, city days and fairs. The city residents, including our teaching staff, planted all these trees. You think with horror of how much time it will take to rebuild everything and return to normal life here", Oleksandr shares his thoughts.

Love of the city and sadness from watching its wounds are obvious from his every phrase.

"I have also lost a lot because of this war. My home burned down. My big bee farm burned. An apartment was destroyed, and two cars as well. But this war has proven that all our material possessions are worth nothing. Human life is the main thing." 

"However, you do risk your life every day", we point out. 

"If you are a man, you have to take up arms and defend your country. I took up arms so that my students would not have to. Or my son," Zavuch responds.

Oleksandr recollects that those were hard weeks in August, when key mechanised units were moved from their positions near Bakhmut, and only soldiers of the Bakhmut battalion of the Territorial Defence Forces remained. 

"Many of my brothers-in-arms were killed or suffered ill health. But they did not abandon their positions, defending their land to the last bullet. They are heroes. They were very brave and wise against the enemy's prevailing forces. The light infantry did not retreat and held the front line without any armoured vehicles or artillery."

"After Russian forces left Kyiv Oblast, all hell broke loose here. This has been going on for eight months now. All this time, we have been working at the positions together with other army brigades. Journalists praise them as heroes who hold Bakhmut, but no one mentions us, for some reason. Brigades come, work and then leave on rotation. But we are here all the time. Because where would we go? This is our city. We are fighting for our own land." There is not so much resentment in his words, but a yearning for justice. 

He recounts how their commander, who was later killed, taught them military skills during the first two months of the war, during breaks between setting up positions and staffing checkpoints. How he felt as a soldier in his first battle, after having been a teacher only yesterday. About dirty and multipurpose weapons that he later mastered: a mortar. 

"Was it hard to learn how to work with a mortar?" we ask. 

"For me, no. Because I am a teacher and have been learning all my life. Leaving the position of deputy head teacher and joining the army, I understood that my brothers-in-arms are the same as children, with the same whims, habits and emotions. So almost nothing has changed at my new job – the same children, but grown up and motivated", Oleksandr replies, smiling.

Zavuch speaks of his new job with admiration; nevertheless, he answers with a confident "no" when asked whether he likes it. He is doing all this solely because there is nothing more important than this job at the moment. He wants peace to come back to this land, but you need to push the Russians out first. 

"If we lay down our arms, there will be no country. I cannot let this happen because it is my land: I grew up here, my grandparents and great-grandparents lived here. They also fought for this land during World War I and World War II. This is my legacy – almost all of my ancestors were servicemen. And when the war came here, I had to become a serviceman as well." 

"This is the monument to the soldiers who liberated our city on 5 April 1943", our tour of the city continues. Oleksandr is a history teacher and knows all the key dates in the region's history.

"To the Liberators of Donbas", reads the plinth underneath the large grey statue of a Soviet soldier, two five-storey apartment blocks destroyed in Russian airstrikes behind his back. Bitter irony permeates the landscape.

"You will probably take a different approach to teaching history after the war?" we ask Oleksandr.

"Of course", he says. "I will try to explain that you cannot sit and wait for someone to do everything for you. We have to go and write our history ourselves. It’s important to study history. History is cyclical, it repeats itself. I regret that there are so few historians among Ukrainian politicians. Had there been more, we would have been prepared for this and would have avoided the things that are happening to us now.

"When artillery strikes, our task is to hunker down and survive"

"Enemy forces are fighting by the book. First they launch an artillery attack. Under the cover of artillery they move closer to our positions. Because the terrain here is so difficult, sometimes we don’t spot them until they’re only a grenade's throw away.

Once our soldier noticed an anti-personnel mine when he emerged from our trenches; he fired to defuse it, and immediately dozens of guns started firing in his direction. Enemy forces were gathering in the nearby windbreak; when they heard our soldier’s shot, they figured they had been spotted and opened fire in response. If not for this, it would have been dark in a couple of hours and they would have been able to enter our trenches."

We are talking to Anatolii Mohyla, deputy commander of the Bakhmut battalion of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces. He is a strong, friendly and unassuming man, around 50 years old. He's been fighting, on and off, since the beginning of the hybrid war [in 2014]. He tells us about how his unit was created.

"The battalion was formed last year after the president issued the order that established the Territorial Defence Forces", Mohyla says. "People started to sign up to join our battalion after the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Our unit was fully staffed within less than a month, all with locals: people from Bakhmut, Toretsk, Chasiv Yar, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and Kostiantynivka."

"Many of our soldiers have nothing left here, their villages have been occupied or destroyed. People have lost a lot because of this war, and that’s what motivates them. Many of them are older, and it’s a bit difficult for them. But so far we’ve been managing quite well", Anatolii assures us.

Prior to 2014, Anatolii lived in Dnipro. Then he joined the army and was deployed to the vicinity of Bakhmut. He married a woman from near there and they settled in Chasiv Yar. He grew to love this region and has felt at home here for a long time.

"Many people wanted to enlist", Anatolii thinks back to February and March 2022. "We had to turn some people down due to their age or health. Some of those people looked like they were finding it difficult to live at all, let alone fight. Though one of our officers is 69 years old. He has been injured, but haran away from the hospital and is eager to fight again. There are people like him, it’s true. Age isn’t always a decisive factor."

Anatolii found out about the Bakhmut Territorial Defence Battalion by chance. When Russia’s full-scale invasion began, he thought about rejoining his former unit, but when his friends told him that a local territorial defence unit was being established, he went straight to Bakhmut without a moment’s hesitation.

"Many people here have lived abroad for decades but came back to fight for their country", Mohyla continues. "The majority of our soldiers had no previous experience with the army. Now they are fighting, and fighting with dignity."

At first, the battalion joined National Police units on duty at local checkpoints. In early April, however, when Russian forces approached Pokrovske, territorial defence units were deployed to strong points, where they are fighting side by side with motorised rifle brigades.

"We are fighting Prigozhin's forces here, all those "good guys" recruited from prisons", Anatolii says. [Yevgeny Prigozhin is the founder of the Wagner Group, a private military company known for its unscrupulous hiring practices, including promising prisoners freedom in exchange for their service – ed.] "We engaged them in hand-to-hand combat in trenches and threw grenades at one another. I have to admit that they are fearless. They never flee when we start shooting at them."

"Sometimes 20 or 30 of them would start advancing. We'd fire at them with a machine gun and it would seem that they're all dead – all lying there quietly, none of them crawling away. Then we'd see one of them light a cigarette and give directions over his radio to adjust fire. They keep advancing until the last of them drops dead. Then a new wave of them starts advancing."

"Once, after we had repelled their attack on our positions, the Wagnerites had to use seven trucks to take away the fallen and injured soldiers. They don’t care how many people get killed. Their corpses keep piling up, there’s an awful lot of them. Now it’s at least a bit colder; before that, the stench around their positions was unbearable."

"Throughout this time, we’ve been on the second line, on the first, even beyond 'ground zero'; we've had observation posts in the grey zone. Four different brigades [of the regular Armed Forces of Ukraine - ed.] rotated in and out, but we have been here all along."

"It can be difficult, going from one set of trenches to another with no break in between. Some people find it difficult. Some, however, don't want to leave their positions, adrenaline coursing through their blood. Even some of the injured soldiers refused to leave. They’d be dragged to an evacuation vehicle and they'd be shouting, asking for ammunition, saying that they could keep shooting if they were given some painkillers. Some people are like that", Anatolii says.

His battalion is now responsible for defending the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut stretching towards Lysychansk, Popasna, Pokrovske and Soledar. 

"During some of the battles, they would capture our positions and then we would reclaim them. Sometimes units that replaced us would lose their positions, and we would then reclaim them. War is war."

"Now we’re in the midst of trench warfare. Our task is to hunker down and survive artillery attacks. Sometimes they storm our positions, because Putin gives them orders to capture certain cities by certain dates. They try to show some results, but they aren’t very successful. And they won’t be."

We are talking to officers, the battalion’s commanders, on the porch of a dormitory destroyed in a Russian airstrike. Now and again the roar of attack aircraft interrupts our conversation as the planes fly right above us. We can’t see them behind the low clouds. We tense up, peering into the officers’ faces to determine how dangerous the situation really is.

"It must be ours", one of the officers says. "I doubt it", replies another, slowly taking another drag on his cigarette. "Our planes usually fly much lower." Another officer smiles and tells us that there is no point worrying: even if we were the planes’ target, we wouldn't have had time to hide.

The roar of artillery and thunderous explosions are the constant backdrop to our conversation. We hear machine guns on the outskirts of the city. Another day in the dogged defence of Bakhmut – the city fated to stop the Russian military machine in its tracks – is coming to an end.

P.S. While the article was being prepared for publication, the Bakhmut Territorial Defence Battalion was withdrawn for a short rotation. It then took up positions on another part of the eastern front, no less difficult. 

Kostiantyn Rieutskyi and Oleksii Bratushchak for Ukrainska Pravda

"The Great Battles" is a project run jointly by Ukraine's Territorial Defence Forces and Ukrainska Pravda. It aims to chronicle, and preserve the memory of, significant events in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The team gathers stories told by Ukraine's defenders in order to recreate this war’s major events, to remember every person involved in them, and to capture the vast panorama of Ukrainians’ fight for their freedom and independence.

Translated by Elina Beketova, Tetiana Buchkovska, Myroslava Zavadska and Olya Loza

Edited by Monica Sandor