DAVID PATRIKARAKOS witnesses the front line facing Putin's 'zombie army' trends now
Hell surrounds me. Plumes of thick smoke curl into the sky. Buildings are shattered and smashed; the wreckage of destroyed vehicles litters the streets, which are deserted save for soldiers scurrying to and fro. Amid it all, the thunder of shelling is relentless.
Bakhmut is the bloodiest front of the war in Ukraine, which makes it about the most dangerous place on Earth right now. The fight has been raging here since November: the longest battle of the war.
In the centre of the city, I am embedded with a Ukrainian Special Forces unit, just a few hundred metres from the Russian soldiers who are determined to kill anyone who stands in their way.
But many of these Russians are no ordinary soldiers. Here, at the centre of the Russian offensive, are mercenaries from the notorious private military company the Wagner Group.
These contracted killers are supplied by a Russian oligarch called Yevgeny Prigozhin, a shaven-headed thug who served nine years in prison for robbery and fraud before making a fortune in catering.
People in military uniform, claimed to be soldiers of Russian mercenary group Wagner and its head Yevgeny Prigozhin, pose for a picture believed to be in a salt mine in Soledar in the Donetsk region, Ukraine
David Patrikarakos (pictured) tells of the war in the centre of Bakhmut – the bloodiest front of the war in Ukraine
Wagner is probably the world’s most dangerous army — a hidden gem in the Kremlin’s bloody sceptre. Prigozhin is proud of employing the most savage fighters. They are known for torturing, burning and beheading their victims — expanding Russia’s influence by brute force.
Just down the road to my left, hundreds, possibly thousands, of these fighters lie in wait. One of my companions, a bear of a man, who goes by the call-sign ‘Grizzly’, is unmoved.
We are standing in a children’s playground just by a smouldering building in the centre of the city. Grizzly is in full body armour, his face filled with contempt. ‘Wagner, pah. Animals,’ he says. ‘We are Special Forces; our job here in Bakhmut is to attack the Russian positions. We will kill them all. They are trash.’
His disgust is understandable. Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine began almost a year ago on February 24 and has not relented.
As Russia’s casualties mount in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, Moscow has turned to finding recruits where it can — including Russian prisons.
In September 2022, Prigozhin visited several penal colonies where he offered prisoners — murderers and rapists included — a choice. Sign up to fight in Ukraine for 100,000 rubles (£1,400) a month, and if you survive for six months you’ll receive a presidential pardon — or you can stay and rot in jail. But, he warned potential recruits, most of you won’t survive.
Many signed up — and they were the worst Russia has to offer. A story has been spreading on the internet that a man called Oleg Sokolov, who was convicted for the murder and dismemberment of his graduate student and lover has joined the Wagner Group as a fighter.
When asked about this Prigozhin laughed it off, insisting the story was false. Sokolov was unsuitable for the Wagner Group, Prigozhin chortled, because ‘women should be f***ed, not dismembered’. Such recruits even pose dangers to their own side.
Smog is seen during a shelling, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the front line city of Bakhmut
Video emerged last week of four Wagner mercenaries in Bakhmut beating and badly wounding their own commander with shovels. On Thursday, Prigozhin claimed to have stopped recruiting from Russia’s jails. But his many thousands of hardened criminals have allowed the Russians to outnumber the Ukrainian defenders by as much as ten to one in some areas.
Another shell explodes. Closer this time. We need to move. We drive off, weaving in and out of roads strafed by rockets and shells, and head back to base where I speak to their commanding officer, whose call-sign ‘Coyote’ is also apt. He’s another dangerous-looking man, with tattoos up both bulging arms and one snaking around his thick neck. He lights a cigarette.
‘We face two types of enemy here,’ he tells me. ‘The Russian army and Wagner. The regular army will attack us, and then when we beat them back, retreat and fire at us with artillery.’
The Wagner fighters are different. ‘They are a mix of general soldiers, a small elite, and then the ex-prisoner contingent. These last have uniforms with the letter K on their name tags; we call them Kashnike. They are used like meat in a grinder, their job is to just advance and die, advance and die.’
This is why Wagner is here. The Ukrainians are well dug-in and have their own elite troops in Bakhmut. The Russian plan is as brutal as it is simple — sending in endless waves to slaughter. Something that soldiers in the regular army would refuse to do.
I’m curious why the Wagner fighters seem willing to run into almost certain death. Coyote grins. They have ‘motivation from both sides,’ he says. What he means is that the group’s brutality does not extend only to its enemies or innocent civilians, but to its own men. Those who try to retreat — or refuse to advance — are often shot by their own commanders.
But the soldiers
