The murky water oh so slowly trickles from the filthy drainpipe into her grimy container — the ticking seconds ramping up the risk that Emilia Budskaya could lose life or limb to Russian artillery strikes torturing her front-line city in eastern Ukraine.
Gaping gashes from deadly shrapnel in the courtyard walls around her testify to the dangers of being outside — exposed and without the body armor that Ukrainian soldiers defending Vuhledar wear when they venture from their bunkers.
Picking their way through the debris and mud, they carry their bounty back to the dark basement that now passes for their home.On the largely static front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces that stretches over hundreds of kilometers — from the Black Sea in the south to Ukraine's northeastern border with Russia — Vuhledar has become one of the deadliest hotspots.
In Bakhmut, a soldier who allowed himself to be identified only by his war name, “Expert,” said the pulverized city in the Donbas' Donetsk region “has become a stronghold " for Ukraine. Battlefields around Vuhledar, southwest of Bakhmut and also in the Donetsk region, bear witness to the precious equipment and manpower that Russia is expending, with little territorial gain for now. Tanks and other armored fighting vehicles blown up by mines or stopped in their tracks by Ukrainian strikes are clumped together on the blasted, cratered terrain.
Russian forces being committed include mercenaries of the notorious Wagner Group, a private military company that has recruited fighters from prisons and tossed them into combat, with high casualty rates. Its millionaire owner with longtime links to Putin, former convicted felon Yevgeny Prigozhin, said Saturday that his fighters advanced into a settlement on Bakhmut's northern outskirts. The Ukrainian military disputed that claim, saying Russian forces were repelled.
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