Ukrainians hunkered down in Bakhmut are watching drone footage in horror as Wagner’s band of murderers and prison rapists keep on marching into battle for the besieged city.
: Wagner has often seized lucrative gold and diamond mines in areas where it operates in Africa, and Prigozhin may have set his sights on the salt and gypsum mines around Bakhmut.
Of the Wagnerites, Rem says that they’re a much more effective fighting force than they’re usually given credit for: “They’re making progress, after all.” Desensitized to violence and with nothing left to lose, the prisoners—many of whom are violent criminals including murderers and rapists—are considered by Ukrainian soldiers a tougher enemy than the average army conscript.
This assessment was echoed in late December by Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former national security adviser for Ukraine currently working on military planning, who: “They are—I cannot say fearless—but they have nothing to lose pretty much. So, they are attacking constantly and they’ve been killed in big quantities as well.”
Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the city in late December underscored the symbolic value of “fortress Bakhmut”—and the sacrifices made to defend it. A Ukrainian officer serving in the East, who asked to remain anonymous, ventured an estimate of a dozen casualties a day.
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