Western media recently hailed Zelensky’s recent visit to the Donets basin, a historic trip, as a milestone in the war. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The Russian Private Military Corporation, Wagner Group, in contrast, noted in one of its Telegram channels that Zelensky’s recent trip to the Donets basin stands in sharp contrast with his previous trip to the centre of Bakhmut prior to the war’s first anniversary.
On December 20th, 2022 Zelensky visited eastern Bakhmut. At the time of his visit in December, the Public Broadcast Corporation, described Zelensky meeting “with military personnel in a dimly lit building—possibly a disused factory—in Bakhmut, which he called ‘the hottest spot on the entire front line.”
The unnamed “dimly lit” and “disused” factory is none other than the factory Wagner Group soldier captured shortly after having cross the Bakhmutka, the now famous river separating the eastern from the western side of Bakhmut. The factory, the AZOM Metallurgic Factory, was the site of Zelensky’s December awards ceremony.
At the time Zelensky’s unannounced trip to the AZOM Metallurgic Factory was designed to dishearten the Russians trying to surround the city.
“Bakhmut Fortress. Our people. Unconquered by the enemy. Who with their bravery prove that we will endure and will not give up what’s ours,” he wrote in response to the unannounced trip on his own Telegram channel.
“Since May, the occupiers have been trying to break our Bakhmut, but times goes by and Bakhmut is already breaking not only the Russian army, but also the Russian mercenaries who came to replace the wasted army of the occupiers,” he continued.
The Saudi Arabian news station, Al-Arabiya (i.e., العربية), recently reported images of Wagner Group’s soldiers on top of a building, waving a guitar as a drone hovered above their heads. In an article entitled, “The Russian Wagner Group Publishes a Video to its Troops, Announcing its Entrance into Bakhmut,” (i.e., مجموعة فاغنر الروسية تنشر صورا لقواتها وتقول إنها داخل باخموت)، Al-Arabiya, whose journalists are embedded in Bakhmut, reported Wagner’s advance.
Shot from the centre of the city, the Wagner Group uploaded the video as proof that its soldiers had crossed the Bakhmutka, indicating that the group had captured more than half of the city.
Prior to capture of Bakhmut’s city centre, the Wagner Group had already foreclosed on nearly all the main roads leading into the city, leaving no road open, except the T0504. Although Western media sources have recently described the current status of the fighting as a ‘lull,’ Ukrainian armed forces continue to feed troops, ammunition, or medical supplies into the city through the T0504, as Ukrainians continue to suffer triple digit losses on a daily basis in the city. The city is encircled.
In a recent post by the Wagner Group’s head, Evgeny Prigozhin stated that the objective of the Wagner Group, which was decided as early as last summer, was to use the battle of Bakhmut to deplete the Ukrainian armed forces’ manpower. “Today the battle for Bakhmut has practically destroyed the Ukrainian army,” he said in his Telegram channel.
In the aforementioned article, which was published on March 29th, 2023 under the title, “Prigozhin announced that the battle for Artemovsk has intentionally destroyed the Ukrainian army” (i.e., Пригожин заявил что битва за Артемовск планомерно уничтожает украинскую армию),” the reporter relays how more than 70% of the almost entirely encircled city is under the control of Russian forces.
On the same day as Prigozhin’s announcement, General Mark Miley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared before lawmakers at a hearing for House Armed Services Committee. At the hearing, Darrell Jackson, a Democratic member of the South Carolina Senate, representing the 21st District since 1993, asked Mr. Miley to explain how Russia’s failure to capture Bakhmut in its entirety is a reflection of the “same deeply incompetent military” Ukraine faced last year. In response, Miley confirmed, stating how “the Ukrainians are conducting an effective area defense [of Bakhmut]. In the last 20 to 21 days, the Russians have not made any progress whatsoever in the city.”
Miley’s statements are outright lies. It is clear from the Wagner Group’s Telegram posts that the Russian forces have not only advanced past the Bakhmutka to the city’s centre but occupied the very factory Zelensky could not visit—-for a second time—since December 20th, 2023.
The fact Zelensky’s most recent visit is not to the AZOM metallurgic factory but a site more than 30 kilometers from the frontlines of Bakhmut (where he decorated soldiers in dry, clean, crisp uniforms) is a clear indication of Russia’s progress. The fact that Miley is permitted to lie to members of the House Armed Services Committee is a reflection of the degree to which bourgeois forms of rule—not just the Presidency but hearings—have begun to deteriorate.
Zelensky’s visit to the Donets Basin, which continues to exist primarily under Russian occupation, comes against the backdrop of an ever widening humanitarian catastrophe throughout Ukraine, not least of which is a result of the actual warfare happening in Bakhmut, the war’s focus, its longest running battle.
Trench warfare characterizes most of the fighting in Bakhmut. Trench warfare, however, is beginning to take a tool on Ukrainian armed forces. Soldiers who have been fighting in the trenches, for instance, are already beginning to hallucinate.
In a description of one soldier, who fought in the trenches, “I once woke up in the trench in the middle of the night and couldn’t understand if I am still sleeping or it is reality,” said Mr. Chuiko, 37, reported to the New York Times on March 24th, 2023 in an article entitled, “As Dreams of Peace Wither, Nightmares Flourish in Ukraine’s Sleep.”
“I was talking with my friends, but we could not find a common language. It was as if some devil or evil force was standing between us. I couldn’t properly see the devil, but I knew it was there.”
The soldier’s description of a nightmarish aspiration is a clear sign of the devastating toll Bakhmut’s trench warfare continues to take on the Ukrainian armed forces. It is likely that after so many soldiers, who haven’t become a victim of the more than triple digit losses happening on a daily basis in Bakhmut, have returned with severe mental health illnesses, Ukraine is scheduled to witness an extreme mental health crisis now, as well as in the years to come.
The extreme mental health crisis, however, is neither the beginning nor the end of the humanitarian crisis plaguing Ukrainians. In a recent report about the cost to rebuild Ukraine, described by investors as the “world largest construction site,” the scale of damage is nearly half a trillion dollars.
In an article entitled, “Zelensky Visits Kherson as Report Puts Rebuild Cost at $411 Billion,” the New York Times reported that in the World Bank’s recently released report on the scale of the damage, an amount of no less than “$411 billion, a substantial increase from the $349 billion figure the bank released in September,” is required to rebuild the country. The article noted, however, how “[the] new number is likely to grow as the war continues.”
In a staggering indictment of the scale of the damage, the World Bank’s mentions, but only in passing, how “destruction from the war and the loss of livelihoods have pushed more than seven million Ukrainians into poverty, undoing 15 years of development.” Ukraine, already one of Europe’s most impoverished countries in Europe, is returned to a state more than 15 years ago today.
The report further state that “[the segment of the population living in poverty increased to 24.1 percent from 5.5. percent during the first year of the war,” an increase of more than 20% percent in the first year of the war. Since the statistic does not take into consideration the months of January, February or March, the statistic is likely to be much higher.
Inflation, which disproportionately affects low-income household, or, rather the vast majority of Ukraine’s population, is as high as 73.5 percent, as compared with prices a year earlier.
Ukraine’s countryside is covered in mines, a weapon of war both Ukrainians as well as Russians have used extensively throughout the conflict. Recently, Doctors Without Borders, said its teams “discovered the presence of antipersonnel land mines inside of functioning hospitals on October 8th, 2022” with their number being as high as 15 in regions throughout Donetsk.
“The use of land mines is widespread in frontline areas,” Vincenzo Porpigilia, a project coordinator for the group in Donetsk, said in a statement. “But to see them placed in medical facilities is shocking—a remarkable act of inhumanity.”
It is not merely the placement of mines at medical facilities that is “a remarkable act of inhumanity.” It is the war itself. The entire Ukraine war is “a remarkable act of inhumanity.”