The artillery battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmout is so intense and has gone on for so long that even a recently delivered German Pzh2000 cannon shows signs of wear.
The longest and bloodiest clash of this war began in the summer of 2022, and the city itself fell under Russian control in May. But the Russian army has not conquered it, the Ukrainians are now fighting on the flanks to take the enemy in a pincer movement.
Infantry units, hardened by long months of combat, have been advancing slowly but surely for several weeks through the forest massif and the fields on the edge of Bakhmout, supported by constant artillery fire which is pounding Russian trenches and positions.
Not far from Bakhmout, a unit of the 43rd artillery brigade is armed with a Panzerhaubitze 2000, a 155mm self-propelled gun resembling a tank.
Given to Ukraine by its European allies in late 2022, this weapon is more accurate and longer ranged than Soviet-designed models, so it is popular with Ukrainian gunners.
But the firing frequency of these vehicles is much higher than the German engineers who designed them had anticipated, especially since Ukraine uses them as much as possible, having barely thirty of them.
The unit led by a young officer with the nom de guerre of “Pravda” has already had to send one of these guns for overhaul, and its mechanics are now hard at work to ensure that the replacement does not fall. broken-down.
The gun turret is marked by shrapnel impacts and the automatic reloading system needs near-permanent care.
And the men, who have only had 10 days leave in more than a year and live in dug-out shelters in the forest, complain that the tank looks more like it was made for driving on German highways than fields of muddy battle.
But no one gives up.
“The sooner we finish (with the Russians), the sooner we will go home,” notes Pravda, vowing to drive out the occupier.
“I want to walk on asphalt again, but maybe I forgot how to do it,” he laughs.
After all that time at the front, another soldier, Krassavtchik – “Handsome” in Russian – has something to clear his head.
“Don’t touch the shovel”, he shouts to a visitor, “this shovel is therapy, when you dig you forget the rest”.
Despite the fatigue, morale was good and the men said they were getting the most out of their German cannon.
After receiving coordinates of a target, they start the 1,000-horsepower tank and exit from the relative safety of the forest massif towards a meadow. Then the huge cannon rises and four detonations echo between the hills.
Soldiers usually don’t know what they’re shooting at, but sometimes military intelligence sends them pictures of what’s been destroyed.
On the cracked screen of a phone, Pravda shows AFP a pixelated image: a crater in which lies the body of at least one Russian soldier.
17/06/2023 05:57:48 – Près de Bakhmout (Ukraine) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP