See Inside Destroyed Bakhmut in Ukraine – The scale of the damage done by fighting in Bakhmut, a city located in eastern Ukraine, was documented in video footage shared on social media in recent days.
What You See in the Ukraine Video
The disturbing footage, recorded by Ukrainian soldiers, shows how residential buildings and properties have been left completely destroyed.
The footage shows Ukrainian soldiers moving across the town, showing items they picked up along the way and even meeting a dog that was left behind by victims of the conflict.
The soldiers spend time with the local dog, pick up ammunition and other resources that they stored in a partly-destroyed residential building, and offer a fascinating look into the damage done by Russian and Ukrainian strikes.
The video was shared on Twitter by a popular war analysis account which revealed that the recording was made by soldiers from the 2nd Assault Battalion of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.
“Soldiers of the 2nd Assault Battalion of the 3rd OShBr showed the outskirts of #Bakhmut destroyed by the Russian invaders #RussiaIsATerroristState,” the account writes.
The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade is a mechanized brigade formed by the Ukrainian military in November of 2022 in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The brigade was formed out of the Azov Special Operations Forces (SSO), meaning it contains experienced veterans who served as part of the Azov Regiment.
The brigade is a fully operational combat unit under the umbrella of the Ukrainian Ground Forces.
The brigade was tasked with engaging in both offensive and defensive operations and has been deployed to the Bakhmut region, where Russian forces continue to spend vast amounts of resources, soldiers, and ammunition to conquer the city.
Soldiers of the 2nd Assault Battalion of the 3rd OShBr showed the outskirts of #Bakhmut destroyed by the Russian invaders #RussiaIsATerroristState pic.twitter.com/WkKX6C2ln6
— Feher_Junior (@Feher_Junior) March 13, 2023
Wagner Reportedly Attempts to Recruit Ukrainians to Fight In Bakhmut
As Ukrainian forces continue to hold on in Bakhmut, despite suggestions that Ukrainian troops were engaging in a coordinated and limited withdrawal in the city, the mayor of Melitopol claimed in recent days that the Wagner Group is attempting to pay Ukrainians to fight for the Russians.
According to Ivan Fedorov, who still runs the Ukrainian-controlled city, said in a television news broadcast that he heard reports that private mercenaries from Wagner were offering Ukrainians in the city as much as 200,000 Russian rubles – worth roughly $2,600 USD – per month to fight alongside them.
The news follows claims from the British Ministry of Defense that Wagner, now that prisoner recruitment has come to an end, is struggling to find enough new soldiers and is likely to be looking to recruit free Russian citizens instead.
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Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
