EFE - Ukrainian soldiers on the Bakhmut front, in the east of the country and the current epicenter of the fighting with the Russians, feel helpless in the face of the incessant wave of bombardments and attacks coming from the other side of the front.

The Ukrainian outlet The Kyiv Independent has collected testimonies from more than a dozen Ukrainian soldiers in the area who describe the front as "a meat grinder" due to the high number of casualties on both sides.

During their brief visits to the nearby town of Kostiantynivka, Ukrainian infantrymen told The Kyiv Independent that poorly trained and unprepared battalions were thrown onto the front line "to survive as best they could" with little support. of armored vehicles, mortars, artillery, drones, and tactical information.

“We didn't get any support,” says a soldier named Serhiy, who has been fighting on the front lines in Bakhmut, sitting with his friend, also named Serhiy, for a chat in a small cafe in the Kostiantynivka market. They recounted that Russian artillery, infantry fighting vehicles, and armored personnel carriers can often attack Ukrainian positions for hours or days without Ukrainian heavy weapons being able to stop them.

According to the Ukrainian publication, some complained about the lack of coordination and awareness of the situation at the front, and also about the extreme shortage of ammunition and having to use weapons dating back to World War II.

Drones, which are supposed to provide essential reconnaissance information, are also in short supply and are being lost at very high rates in some parts of the battlefield, soldiers told the outlet.

All of this leads to terrible casualties of dead and wounded. "The battalion arrived in mid-December... between all the different platoons we were 500," says Borys, a military doctor from the Odessa region fighting around Bakhmut.

"A month ago, we were literally 150," he confesses to The Kyiv Independent.

Survival chances
"When you get out into the position, there's not even a 50/50 chance that you'll get out of there (alive)," says another soldier. "It's more like 30/70."

The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, has acknowledged the difficult situation his army is going through in Bakhmut, a strategic stronghold, a communications hub, whose control could allow the Russians to establish a safe corridor in eastern Ukraine to transfer soldiers and weapons.

On the front, on the Russian side, the mercenaries of the Wagner group have used hundreds of prisoners released by Russia to swell their battalions.