A Visit to a Ukrainian Battlefield The Last Undertakers of Bakhmut
Long before Bakhmut comes into view behind the gently rolling hills, you can hear the city. What initially sounds like an incessant cacophony piercing the winter haze begins to dissolve into a number of distinct noises upon approach – and learning to tell them apart can mean the difference between life and death. There are the dry blasts from outgoing Ukrainian mortar fire, sometimes vibrating as if the bang and its echo are overlapping. Then there is the deep thumping from incoming Russian strikes, longer detonations that are sometimes followed by the crunching of debris. In between is the clattering of heavy machine gun fire along with the occasional hissing of a Grad rocket, followed by a rapid series of smaller explosions.
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 6/2023 (February 3rd, 2023) of DER SPIEGEL.
From the top of the hill, the road leads in from the West, the last halfway secure approach to the city. It heads straight down the slope for several hundred meters into the Bakhmutka river valley. The last Ukrainian checkpoint on the outskirts of Bakhmut has been abandoned for the past several days, but not because the army has given up on the city. Every few minutes, tanks and armored personnel carriers rattle past, with soldiers also arriving in delivery vans and SUVs – and even a pale-yellow Lada trundles past, its trunk held shut with a piece of laundry line and covered in grayish-brown mud.
The checkpoint, made up of heavy concrete blocks covered with camouflage netting, had become an easy target for Russian artillery, and was already struck once before. The entire city and its surroundings have become a combat zone, a soldier says as he warms himself up next to a wood stove – the fiercest fighting in all of Ukraine.
Natural gas supplies to the city have been cut off since last May and Russian artillery has been pounding the city since summer. Water was cut off in September and the electricity followed in October. In mid-January, temperatures plunged to minus 15 degrees Celsius and on January 25, the Ukrainian government conceded that it had lost control of the small mining town of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut. Then, Russian troops went on to conquer the village of Klishchiivka to the south. Soldiers returning from the peripheral town of Ivanivske and the district of Zabakhmutka report intense house-to-house fighting. The artillery, which has transformed Bakhmut into a wasteland of rubble over the past several months and blown out all the windows of those buildings still standing, shifted for a few days in late January from the center toward the periphery. The Russians are intent on surrounding the city and cutting it off from the last access roads and supply lines.
The Bakhmut of today is a ghost town, abandoned by 90 percent of its erstwhile 70,000 residents. Packs of dogs roam through empty streets while flocks of crows pick through the garbage that hasn’t been collected for months. But people do still show up occasionally, such as those shuffling slowly through the inferno with a handcart full off water. One of them is Yuri, a retiree in a wool cap making his way back from a well at the edge of town. "Everyone is talking about evacuating. But why should I go anywhere else? My home is here. This is where my parents are buried.” An older woman catches up to us breathlessly: "People don’t love us anywhere else!” But here? "This is home.”
They risk being struck by Russian artillery. But every day, volunteer aid workers come to Bakhmut to provide for those who still live in the city, bringing wood, medical supplies, food and drinking water.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGEL
Wherever there are wells or springs on the outskirts of town, residents of Bakhmut show up with jugs to fetch water. They always come early in the morning, when the artillery fire lets up "and it's only good for washing, not for drinking," they say.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGELThe last 10 percent of the city’s population continues to hold out. Especially the older residents of Bakhmut don’t want to leave the hell of their hometown – even if they must rely on fearless aid workers for food and medical supplies, brought into the town in small delivery vans. All of Bakhmut’s hospitals have been destroyed, although there is still a doctor in town, and she insists that two of her colleagues are surely still around as well.
The closer you get to the center, the more dreadful things become. The eastern part of the city on the other side of the river is within sight of Russian snipers, the Ukrainian soldiers warn. But the "Points of Invincibility," as the emergency shelters with ovens, hot soup and WiFi are called, are also located closer to the town’s periphery. So too are the distribution sites for aid supplies and the tiny market, where a handful of dauntless vendors offer up bacon, dried fish, batteries, felt boots and woolen goods from their trunks or on fold-up tables. They remain there from the morning to the evening, "when the shelling gets too strong," says one man, as though the war could be avoided by sticking to a strict schedule.
The center is full of devastation, loud and empty – aside from the ground floor of a corner building. On Peace Street, surrounded by bombed out, abandoned buildings and two homes that have been burning for days, six men and two women are carrying on with their work. Among empty spruce caskets, plastic flower arrangements, colorful sashes and black synthetic jackets with fake pockets, the employees of the state-run funeral home are continuing operations: Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., closed on Saturdays and Sundays.
During just a single week, one of them is injured, a second is almost killed by gunfire and a Russian rocket detonates in the courtyard. "But you could just as easily get into a car accident somewhere else,” says Viktoriya, the stoic receptionist, "or get hit in the head by a brick.” Nobody contradicts her.
A shell or rocket struck this residential building in Bakhmut, partially destroying it. But even if the walls are still standing, the blast waves have broken almost all of the windows in the city and there is no longer any heating. At temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius, the apartments can no longer be used.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGELIt’s a motley crew. Volodymyr is a gentle, portly man in his late 40s whose family came to Bakhmut from Georgia at some point in the past. "Vova,” as everyone calls him, was in Somalia with the Ukrainian navy before earning his keep as a construction worker in Kyiv ("everything but electrical”), but he always wanted to return home. Serhiy, the oldest of the group, is furious with the Russians, with the hearses that are constantly breaking down and with anyone who gets in his way. Petya, the youngest, looks so small peering out from his oversized hoodie and speaks so quietly that it’s almost as if the world is simply too big for him. He says the elderly who pass away this winter also deserve to be buried with dignity. Kostya, a melancholic man in his mid-40s with a wispy beard adds that their work allows them to at least earn a bit of money: "Otherwise, there are no jobs left. And, well, people continue to die.” Ivan, a former policeman who runs the place, admits that it is dangerous to remain in the city center. "But everyone knows this address. At least they can find us.”
As different as they are from each other and as varied are their reasons, they all agree on one thing: They’re staying. It’s crazy. Or, as they see it: Every day survived is a victory over the misery of their current existence. "We are needed,” they say. A simple burial costs around 7,000 hryvnia, the equivalent of about 170 euros. The state pays if the dead have no families.
The distant rattling of machine guns and the pounding of the artillery shells are accompanied by the clacking of Tanya’s staplegun she uses in the workroom to attach decorative linings to the edges of the caskets. Hits from the 1990s play from a small speaker. Every few minutes, the generator – already patched together numerous times – stops and plunges the funeral home into darkness until the two pale bulbs finally come back to life.
Viktoriya, dressed in a snowsuit, a fur vest, a wool cap and felt boots, worked for the city’s parks department until summer, maintaining flower beds in the municipality. It’s not exactly a job with much of a future in Bakhmut, but, she insists, she has to stay. "I now have 10 dogs, two cats and three ducks from all those who have left.” Every animal she takes in makes it harder to leave. "The more people flee, the more important it is that they be taken care of.”
Someone needs to finally pick up the dead body of the old woman from the house around the corner that was struck by artillery, insists Serhiy. She has been lying there for four days, he says. But Andriy and Petya are still trying to get the papers for another dead body. In Bakhmut, the bureaucratic procedures are still applicable which require the police to first check whether a death, even if age was the most likely cause, may actually have been the result of foul play. That paper is necessary for the health office to issue a death certificate. Where, though, are the city’s last police officers, whose station is but a pile of rubble? Where are the forms and the stamps? All the phone networks are down. Who is supposed to issue the death certificates?
Plus, Vova and Kostya want to head home on time. They still live on the other side of the river in Zabakhmutka, where Russian troops can see who they are shooting at and where crossing the bridge has become a new form of Russian roulette, with live shelling. The others think it’s too dangerous as well. "There is exactly one room left in my house,” says Vova. "The rest is gone.” Almost as though it were a sign from the heavens to stay. Usually, he reassures the others, he avoids the bridge by walking across the ice.
Outside at the edge of town, Ukrainian soldiers in full battle dress stumble across the street through the haze of the next morning. On the other side, they fall onto a frozen earthen embankment despite the bitter cold and stay there. Exhausted, relieved, but mostly shaken: "113th Brigade,” says one. "Relieved of duty.” He explains that they had just walked five kilometers from their position near "zero line,” the front. The night’s total: four dead and three injured. He then falls silent and stares into the morning sky.
"They come in waves,” a Ukrainian soldier will later say, describing his experience of the last six weeks from a position just outside the city. "The first wave of Russians, 10 or 15 of them, runs at our position. Almost all are shot and killed. But then, the Russian scouts know where we are. They also have drones. Russian artillery then begins firing on our trenches – and the next wave comes. And another. Sometimes a dozen of them within 24 hours.” He estimates that there are eight Russians for every one Ukrainian. But, he adds, the Russians also lose many more men.
He says they are shooting so many Russians that he can’t imagine how the generals in Moscow can keep going for long. "It’s like World War II.” But their losses are also horrific. "We used to be 90 or 95 men. Now, only half are still here. Every fifth man is dead.” They held their ground until they were relieved. "But can we do it again?” And what about those who have simply gone crazy and can’t take it anymore? "Often, only 50 meters separate us from the Russians, sometimes less.” Some, he says, can no longer handle the fear, while others can’t accept the fact that they have survived while their friends are dead. A few have committed suicide.
Vova on the path where he was almost killed several days earlier, heading home to the neighborhood of Zabackmutka on the other side of the river, a city district where the Russians are so close, they can see what they're shooting at. Vova is wearing a bullet-proof vest and a helmet, though such protection is only marginally useful against mortar fire.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGELThis war does something to everyone here. It makes some braver, drives others insane and robs the will to live from still others.
When Viktoriya and the rest arrived at the funeral home at 7:30 a.m. on this Thursday morning, they say, a fire was still burning outside. They had parked the hearse as carefully as possible between two parts of the building out back. But a Grad rocket detonated at that exact spot, tearing up the body of the vehicle, bending and wrinkling it as if it were the frilly fabric of funeral ornamentation. The workshop and showroom with its 17 caskets were untouched, as was the reception area. But now, they no longer have a hearse.
And Vova hasn't shown up. As far as they know from soldiers, he was injured by a shell on his way home the night before. He apparently could no longer hear or speak, the result of shock and the explosion. The soldiers had wanted to take him to a hospital outside the city, "but he refused,” says Viktoriya, adding that he had apparently managed to limp home. But, she adds disapprovingly, nobody can call him and nobody knows how he’s doing or even if he is still alive. Either way, they still have three dead bodies to pick up.
Exhausted and relieved at having survived the front: Soldiers from the 113th Brigade have just returned from the battlefield, walking five kilometers before collapsing on this frozen earthen embankment. They survived the night, but four of their comrades did not.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGEL
The improvised operating rooms are set up near the front, but they provide just enough resources for Ukrainian military doctors and paramedics to care for the wounded, who sometimes show up by the minute. "We cannot become sentimental. We must be quick and precise," says Rabbi, one of the paramedics.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGELSerhiy curses and heads out, managing to find a replacement vehicle without an ignition key. To start it, he has to hotwire it each time. Three of them head out. Someone has written "200, fourth floor” with a felt-tip pen on the door of a building around the corner, using the old Soviet code for "dead body.” Lying among the tipped over furniture, they find Nina Kolomoizeva. Half of her head is missing. They are unable to find any identification with her date of birth, but at least the cause of death is clear.
Somewhere in the Posyolok neighborhood, a man is allegedly lying dead in his house. But where exactly? Serhiy drives through the same streets over and over again, but is unable to find the address. Questions about where the deceased might be found are met with shakes of the head. Finally, though, they find Yuriy, who lived in a house with an overgrown yard. "I can’t understand how he died,” a neighbor calls out from across the way. "He had an oven, wood and food to eat.” Yuriy is lying on his sofa, his head turned to the side, perhaps the victim of a heart attack. He was a heavy man, and it takes all three of them to get him out of the house through the cluttered room, packed with myriad books along with a dusty, black piano on which are a number of brightly colored plastic animals. What kind of a person was he? Then, the horn honks outside and Yuriy is loaded in next to Nina. The journey continues, but at least they have an address for the third person: Yubileyna Street, Block 2/4, second floor. Another Nina.
It is one of those apartment buildings normally kept warm with district heating, but which are now ice cold. Nina Michailova, 73, a retired librarian, is wrapped completely in a wool sleeping bed, with only her head visible.
How did she die? Was she sick? Did she freeze to death? Did she die of thirst because she grew too weak to escape her cocoon? Petya cuts open the sleeping bag. Nina’s toes are black, her body so light that Serhiy can lift her into the white plastic sack by himself, before zipping it up and throwing her over his shoulder to carry her down. "Wait,” yells Petya from the next room. "I have to find her passport or something.” He rummages through drawers and boxes before finally finding a retirement ID. "Davai!” Let’s go! Never stay too long in one spot. A neighbor is standing outside on the sidewalk. "Yeah, Nina. She lived here. I think she had cancer,” she says with a brief smile. "She was so lively, liked to talk to everyone. She was smart.” And now she’s dead. "Yeah.” No remorse, just a nod.
Once the three white sacks have been stowed at the improvised morgue at the edge of the city, Petya looks dejectedly out of the side window of their borrowed vehicle and gestures with his head at the shot-up apartment block on the other side of the street. "That’s where my apartment was. I owned it, I bought it with my savings.” The building’s façade is pockmarked with expansive holes and all the windows have been shattered by blast waves. Curtains flap in the winter wind from some of the window frames.
Now, he says, he's living with his parents again. The fact that he has remained in the city and is still working has nothing to do with the money, he says. "People want to be buried properly with dignity when their time has come,” he says. They can’t do much for them any longer, he says, with no church service, no priest, no real flowers, and they don’t even know for sure if the first Nina from Horbatova Street actually passed away on January 21. "But still.”
"Points of Invincibility" are places set up in cellars and ground floors where aid workers use stoves to provide warmth and hand out tea and hot soup. They have also installed WiFi networks, which are of vital importance since all of the telephone networks in the city are down. Those wanting to communicate with the outside world need internet access.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGEL
For months, this girl has been living with her mother in a cellar beneath Bakhmut, the only safe place. For a time, a resident even held lessons for her and other children. But now, she says, he has unfortunately left.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGELThe closer you get to Bakhmut, the more darkly painted delivery vans, converted into makeshift ambulances, can be seen parked on the side of the road – far apart from each other so that a single shell will only hit one of them. Three or four kilometers from the combat zone, the army has set up "stabilization points” where first aid is provided to the wounded.
From the outside, only a pale glimmer of light is visible – the site has to remain secret. "Rabbi,” a first responder who has returned to Ukraine from Israel, where his family emigrated, has allowed the DER SPIEGEL team to be present as long as we stay out of the way. "We have to be fast. Always.” It’s not long before the screeching of a tracked vehicle approaches. The armored personnel carrier quickly brakes and the tailgate opens up. Two soldiers jump out and carry in a wounded comrade wrapped in shiny gold foil. Fifteen minutes later, a pickup arrives with a badly wounded soldier lying in the icy cold on the open bed. Then, a third patient arrives. There are also calm days, Rabbi says, but this isn’t one of them.
Inside, three paramedics and a doctor are working quickly and quietly. Using a teacup-sized magnet, they pull small pieces of shrapnel from the tissue of a badly wounded soldier. He screams before falling silent as the morphine takes hold. He has lost large chunks of muscle from his leg and bits of bone from his elbow. As he is being repositioned on the table, a thumb-sized piece of shrapnel falls out of his buttocks. A paramedic says that "from a trauma perspective, he was extremely lucky: heart, brain, internal organs – all of it is undamaged. He’ll survive. In two or three months, he can return to the front.” It's just unclear, the medical professional adds, whether he’ll ever be able to stretch out his arm again. "And now, he’s done.” They have to quickly clean the treatment table for the next patient.
The sliced-up pants and bloodied jackets end up in large garbage bags. Telephones, good-luck charms and IDs are placed in clear plastic bags and are sent along with the injured soldiers, who are distributed to hospitals throughout the country. Only the boots end up outside the door of the treatment room – in an extended row along the wall.
Unusual, but minimally invasive and, of utmost importance, quick: Using a strong magnet, doctors in the "stabilization centers" remove small pieces of metal shrapnel from the bodies of the wounded.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGEL
"Why am I still here? Because I swore the Hippocratic Oath. We're supposed to be the last to leave," says Tatiana Molchonova, the only doctor remaining in Bakhmut that takes civilian patients. Though she says of her mostly elderly patients: "They shouldn't be here any more. They should leave while they still can!"
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGELBut what’s it all for? Why are the Russians so intent on conquering Bakhmut, despite the extremely high price? It’s the same question that Ukrainian military leaders and even the deputy commander of a Chechnyan volunteer unit in Bakhmut keep asking: "What do they want with a city down in a valley that is hard to defend and easy to fire on from above?” Bakhmut wasn’t even the focus of much fighting in World War II, they say.
They usually answer the question themselves. Their city, they say, has become the focus of a Moscow power struggle, centered on who will be able to claim Bakhmut. Yevgeny Prigozhin and his private Wagner Group, made up of mercenaries and freed criminals? Or regular Russian troops under the command of Valery Gerasimov? Prigozhin had been hoping to accomplish what the Russian military was unable to in the summer, but the Wagner Group only made it to Soledar. In Bakhmut, Prigozhin’s troops took such severe losses that since the beginning of the last week of January, regular troops have again been spotted in the area. None of the Ukrainians, though, express confidence that they’ll be able to hold on to Bakhmut for much longer.
Fog hangs low over the hills the next morning, muffling the distant roar. Margarita Popovich, 95, died peacefully on Saturday morning, says her daughter, who has arrived with a neighbor. It is the first burial this week attended by mourners. The cemetery of Chasiv Yar, located a 20-minute drive west of Bakhmut, is the last remaining safe place for funerals in the area. It is a beautiful location, with a view across the meadows and forests, Bakhmut lying in the distance.
The men from the funeral home have to use pry bars to loosen the frozen earth before they can fill in the grave of Margarita Popovich. The 95-year-old died of old age on January 28, right in the middle of embattled Bakhmut.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGELIt's a short ceremony. Petya says a few words that the wind carries away before pouring a bottle of holy water over the casket. Planning ahead, the daughter of the dead woman managed to obtain it back when the churches were still open. Men have to break apart the frozen earth with pry bars in order to fill in the grave. Every few weeks, a large backhoe comes by to dig another row of graves. Once the men have covered the casket, two plastic bouquets are placed on the pile of earth along with the cross and its plastic plate.
"We need nails, damn it,” mumbles Serhiy as they drive away, small nails for the caskets of the kind they can’t buy at the city’s tiny market. And they have to head out to collect the next dead body, a nameless man of around 60, presumably homeless. He is deep in the southern part of Bakhmut, about as far as they are willing to go – after all, they say, they’re not trying to get themselves killed. Neighbors have pulled the body into an abandoned house to keep it away from the dogs. Petya grabs the body bag, Andrey the medical gloves while Serhiy hotwires the motor and the van heads south between fallen trees and bits of rubble.
They quickly find the man. He has a shaggy beard and raggedy clothes – and a bullet hole in the back of his head. The neighbor who opened the gate raises her arms, saying that’s how they found him on the street. The others speculate about how he might have died: Perhaps he tried to break in somewhere in the night? That wouldn’t be such a great idea so close to the front. Theoretically they'd now have to begin the process of applying for a death certificate. But a dead man without papers who nobody knows? Petya spreads out the plastic sack with handles on the side and the others set the frozen corpse into it. They take the quickest route to the cemetery and heave the sack into one of the last two open graves. His sign merely reads: "Unknown Man – 2023.”
Tanya decorating caskets at the funeral home using a staple gun: "They should look nice," she says.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGEL
Four of 17 caskets from better days, back when a large selection of different models was on offer in the showroom, including one with brass handles that could be partially opened. "These days, we're happy if any of the family shows up," says Viktoriya, the receptionist. She says they collect a lot of dead bodies without knowing who they are.
Foto: Johanna Maria Fritz / Agentur Ostkreuz / DER SPIEGELBack at the office, Vova has reappeared. Risen from the presumed dead. His shrapnel wounds have been tended to, but he stutters as he tries to find his words. In a number of short sentences, he tells the rest of the story. He was wounded by shelling, which tore the legs off the cyclist in front of him. "I went to him, found some wire, bound up his bleeding legs, pulled him into a garage. I called out, but nobody came. I then went back across the bridge until soldiers found me.”
After an hour, he says, they were able to return to the wounded man, who they brought alive to the hospital in Kramatorsk, 60 kilometers away. They wanted to take Vova along as well, "but almost nothing had happened to me.” He made his way back to the hellscape of Zabakhmutka and spent four days in bed in his last remaining room. Kostya also feels that everything has gone well. "Last night was good, or at least my trip home was fine. But then I was almost shot outside in the courtyard.” A bullet whizzed past his head, he says, as he was smoking outside.
Smoking is dangerous, says Viktoriya. "Outside, I mean.” But Ivan, their boss, has banned them from smoking inside, saying it’s disrespectful. When the others were away at the cemetery, a shell struck the intersection outside at around 10:30 a.m., hardly 30 meters from the door of the funeral home. Because Ivan isn’t there, they all pull out their cigarettes. Vova manages to find a bottle of vodka, Serhiy has some crackers and apples, and they all celebrate Vova’s miraculous return. It’s a brief celebration, but by the time they all leave at 1:30 p.m., the bottle is empty.
The day after the celebration, the detonations have returned and Russian missiles again pound the center of Bakhmut on the last day of January. Inside the funeral home on Peace Street, Serhiy is listening to the explosions and the crunching of debris that follows. The severity of his expression fades away. "We’ll have work tomorrow,” he says.
Later, a couple of crows rise from a bare oak tree amid the ruins as the ground shakes from two heavy explosions. But the remainder of the huge flock of crows remains sitting in the tree. Untouched. Unmoved.
