In the eastern Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar, seven-year-old Symon was clinging to a chocolate bar and a packet of biscuits he had just been given by an aid worker. With the sound of each new shell landing – and they were coming every few seconds – his small body shook and shivered in sympathetic rhythm. Eventually he buried his head against his mother, Svetlana’s, coat and closed his eyes.
‘We are terrified’, said Svetlana, a 47-year-old who worked as a chemist in a laboratory before the war. ‘Of course we want to leave.’
Using back roads, and in a borrowed helmet and flak jacket, I visited Chasiv Yar this past weekend with a Canadian colleague, a driver and a photographer.
The shelling around the town – which made for constant, distant thunder – was less intense than usual.
‘This is a quiet day’, said 11-year-old Bohdan, who had also received chocolate. ‘Yesterday was worse’. The relative calm may now be about to change.
Ukrainian authorities fear that this small town, or at the very least the road that runs just south of it, is next on the Kremlin’s target list.
The expected push would be be an attempt to cut off and eventually surround Bakhmut, a battered town that has been lionised by Kyiv as a symbol of its resistance.
In Moscow, Bakhmut, by contrast, has become a byword for failure. Russian military commanders have been vilified and mocked by nationalists for their failure to take it.
A week ago, after intense fighting, the Russians seized control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar, a dozen miles to the north-east of Chasiv Yar. Since then they have grabbed a sliver of land to the south-east.
Bakhmut’s capture – if it happens – would be the first significant Russian battlefield victory since last summer and give President Putin a badly-need morale boost after months of military setbacks.
It would also bolster the standing of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the private Russian mercenary group Wagner, who has been given control of this section of the frontline, and whose political fortunes seemed tied to delivering Russia a victory in Bakhmut.
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