Hardly a day goes by without the Ukrainian mobile artillery unit to which soldier Serhiy Gnezdilov belongs being called to fire rockets at Russian forces positioned north of the town of Bakhmut. "Sometimes they send us out five times a day," said the 23-year-old from a motorized brigade, as he returned from his first outing of the day.

An hour and a half earlier, at dawn on Sunday, July 23, he and other soldiers had set off in a pick-up nicknamed the "Mobile Nightmare," with an anti-tank gun mounted on its rear. The aim of the mission was to get within 2 kilometers of enemy lines in order to fire a few rockets at a position: a group of soldiers around a heavy machine gun. It was a perilous task, given the intensity of the Russian bombardment, but one that ended in success, Gnezdilov said nonchalantly.

For the soldiers of this unit deployed in the Bakhmut sector since February, the aim of these outings is to "harass and tire out" enemy forces, explained Gnezdilov. "We're getting ready for the big battle," said the soldier, certain that his country's army will succeed in recovering the town captured by the private Wagner militia on May 20, after 10 months of fierce fighting. In fact, since the beginning of May, Ukrainian forces have been advancing and recovering chunks of territory on Bakhmut's northern and southern flanks.

"Everyone expected the counter-offensive to start from the south," explained Andryi Bloschinsky calmly. We met "Nuts" (his nom de guerre), a section commander of the Third Assault Brigade, in a café in Kostiantynivka, a town in the sector. "But this is where it all began." At dawn on May 6, he and his men were among the first to break through the Russian positions deployed on Bakhmut's southern flank with the help of a barrage of Ukrainian artillery fire. "We advanced in groups of 16," said Bloschinsky. "While one group advanced, the other stayed behind to cover it with fire."

By 1 pm, eight hours after the assault was launched, the soldiers of the third brigade had already achieved the feat of advancing "2.7 kilometers," he claimed. That's half a day to "recover positions that Wagner had taken months to take," said the young soldier with a mocking smile. "The Russians were running away," added Volodymyr Skorobagatch, nom de guerre "BBC" and group commander in the same brigade. "We were pushing so hard, firing without stopping. They couldn't hold out."

Violent fighting

Three months after the launch of this offensive, the perilous assaults by the soldiers of the third brigade are meeting with more resistance. Bloschinsky explained that, having retreated several kilometers, the Russian soldiers are now taking advantage of former positions that the Ukrainian army occupied before being pushed back by Wagner's soldiers in the winter of 2022.

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