Blood and horror in the trenches like in the First World War! …

The Bakhmut front brought back memories of the First World War, the soldiers were tired and wading through the mud

The campaign for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut is shaping up to be the most brutal battle against the invading Russian army, Newsweek reports.

Frontline images released this week by the Ukrainian government showed soldiers huddled in a charred, desolate landscape reminiscent of World War I scenes seen across Europe as the city of 70,000 was reduced to rubble under Russian artillery fire .

As winter approached, the Ukrainian forces established themselves in mud trenches dug in barren ground.

Video footage of the city shows a community in shambles, streets littered with mud and rubble amidst burnt buildings and broken windows.

Images from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry show miserable conditions in the trenches and infantry wading through inches of water, and increasingly hostile weather conditions.

The battle for Bahmut remains a match of metres, if not centimeters, with both sides unable to move due to the risk of almost certain death from lack of cover.

The campaign for the Ukrainian city is shaping up to be the most brutal battle against the invading Russian army.

Both sides suffered hundreds of casualties

– the total number is difficult to verify.

“The picture looks similar to World War I,” a senior Pentagon official told reporters earlier this week and put the situation into perspective:

“You have two sides facing each other, trying to hit each other with artillery, using the artillery to push people forward, but getting to that point, the other side is doing the same and there is no it’s a way out.”

Russian forces have begun making progress in recent weeks after months of back-to-back attacks on the Ukrainian front in Bakhmut, and the Russian military has continued to send reinforcements in an attempt to recapture the city after a string of defeats in contested regions such as Kherson, which it was liberated by Ukrainian forces earlier this month.

However, some have speculated that the Russians are exaggerating their progress in taking the city rather than wanting to regain some calm amid reports of deteriorating morale among front-line soldiers.

That report said the recent battles were “more about Wagner’s prestige in inner Kremlin circles than any unified military thinking.”

“All other cities in Donetsk Oblast are too far from Russian lines, and Bakhmut’s capture will mean at least some progress for the Russians in Donetsk Oblast,” Huseyn Aliyev, a research associate and lecturer at the University of Glasgow. .

US military officials said at a Pentagon briefing it was a source of pride for Ukraine, noting that the Russians have so far failed to advance beyond the city since 2014, when the conflict between the two nations began.

A Tuesday report from the Institute for the Study of War said that while some Russian sources said they had breached Ukrainian defenses, satellite imagery showed only marginal gains in the city, while degraded Russian forces around the city were “unlikely ” to put Bakhmut under immediate threat.