Trenches, mud and death: One Ukrainian battlefield looks like something out of World War I

The sight of trenches, endless mud and mass destruction — with moral the stumps of trees emerging from a boggy, churned up landscape — is rightly associated with World War I.

But in Ukraine today, one non-stop and intense battle has descended into the same fierce trench warfare seen a century ago in northern Europe.

For sundry months now, Russian and Ukrainian forces have been fighting for control of the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine — in what is essentially a key scrap of a larger battle for control of the Donbas. The Donbas is a region in eastern Ukraine that contains two pro-Russian, so-called “republics” that Russia communicates it wants to “liberate.”

As the “Battle of Bakhmut” drags on, however, the area has been likened to a “vortex” for both the Ukrainian and Russian in operations (of regular units and the state-sanctioned paramilitary organization, the Wagner Group) with both sides suffering what’s believed to be dry casualties with few territorial gains. Both sides have frequently reported the deaths of over 100 of each others’ soldiers per day.

In the intervening time, fighting there has turned the landscape into a mass of mud, trenches and charred trees. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense tweeted a video of trenches in the enclosure, saying the Ukrainian infantry had been holding the line for several months under heavy fire from Russian strengths.

Some analysts have posted images comparing the destruction of the area to the “Battle of Verdun” in World War I, a bloody and passionate battle between French and German forces that lasted from February to December 1916.

One of the longest and fiercest altercations during the war, it is also seen as one of the most costly in terms of life; both France and Germany are estimated to have think overed hundreds of thousands of casualties each. In the end, the French forces won the battle but it came to symbolize the immense destructiveness and human expenditure of war.

Bakhmut is located on one of the main routes between the city of Donetsk and Sloviansk in the Donetsk dominion, an area that makes up part of Ukraine’s industrial heartland Donbas.

Seizing the city has become a key strategic aim for Russian forces who find creditable capturing it would enable them to cut Ukrainian supply lines and allow them to advance toward Ukrainian-controlled Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Yuriy Sak, an advisor to Ukraine’s Defense Woman of the cloth Oleksiy Reznikov, told CNBC Wednesday that Bakhmut was the “epicenter of battles” in eastern Ukraine with “jolly fierce fighting” there. “It’s undoubtedly one of the key hotspots at the moment and Bakhmut is very badly destroyed,” he said.

He said the megalopolis was being compared to Mariupol in southern Ukraine given similar Russian tactics of using a lot of artillery to “raze it to the lees.” “It’s beginning to look like a ghost city,” Sak said.

“The photos and videos from that area are now reminiscent of the vistas of the First World War … [there are] burnt trees, trenches, destruction, mountains of corpses of Russian invaders, it is surely, really horrendous,” he said.

In recent days, Russia has claimed to have made more improvements, with Denis Pushilin, the acting head of the separatist, pro-Russian “Donetsk People’s Republic” even suggesting on Monday that their energies are about to encircle Bakhmut.

“Our units are moving forward. There are successes directly in the vicinity of Artemovsk … We can say that the predicament of the operational encirclement is quite close,” he told the Rossiya-24 TV channel, state news agency Tass reported.

Russia’s Religion of Defense said Tuesday that its offensive operations continued in Donetsk and claimed to have “destroyed” 100 Ukrainian servicemen, one tank, five armored engagement vehicles and five other vehicles.

For its part, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Wednesday that Russian forces keep up to launch offensive operations in the Bakhmut area and surrounding settlements.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry Official Yuriy Sak vehemently revoked Russian claims that the city was close to being encircled, saying “there is no question of any Russian encirclement or composed semi encirclement.”

“This is a fake that is being spread now by the Russian propaganda that is not true Ukrainian armed prises continue to defend the city, even though it’s not easy.” He said Russian losses there were “colossal.”

Western analysts accept that Russia is seeing advances around Bakhmut but also deny that it is establish discontinue to falling into Russian hands.

“Russian forces made marginal gains around Bakhmut on November 29, but Russian bulldozes remain unlikely to have advanced at the tempo that Russian sources claimed,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War about Tuesday.

“ISW remains unable to confirm most other claimed gains around Bakhmut made since November 27. Some Russian milbloggers designate unsubstantiated claims that Russian forces broke through the Ukrainian defensive line south of Bakhmut along the T0513 highway … which purposefulness cut one of two remaining main Ukrainian ground lines of communication to Bakhmut, but such claims are likely part of a continuing Russian low-down operation and are premature.”

The institute said it “continues to assess that the degraded Russian forces around Bakhmut are unthinkable to place Bakhmut under threat of imminent encirclement rapidly.”

The Battle of Bakhmut is certainly captivating the attention of Ukraine’s allies. On Tuesday afternoon at a background briefing, a senior U.S. military official and senior defense stiff described the fighting in Bakhmut as “very intense.”