The city of Bakhmut became a center of the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, and the site of one of the longest and deadliest battles of the war.
Residents of Bakhmut trying to extinguish a fire using buckets of water after rockets hit homes in the area in July.Credit…Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
When two Ukrainian cities in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine fell to Russian forces in quick succession last summer, Bakhmut, a city about 30 miles to the southwest, became the next target of Russia’s campaign to secure the whole of the Donbas.
Bakhmut had been a supply hub for Ukrainian fighters in the two Luhansk cities — Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk — and had been shelled repeatedly by Russian forces, prompting much of Bakhmut’s population of about 70,000 to flee. At that time, however, few expected the city, which was also the site of fierce fighting in 2014, to become the longest-running sustained battle of the war.
Fall 2022A soldier crossing the…
This article was written by The New York Times and originally published on www.nytimes.com