How Ukraine Special Forces Recaptured Trenches Outside Bakhmut

Like so many others defending Ukraine, Golian’s military life began with Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.

An engineer, he signed up to fight that day, leaving behind a wife and a five-year-old son.

Golian’s group was often sent out on vanguard operations. That day, in mid-April, the task was on the northwestern outskirts of Bakhmut, a series of trenches protecting artillery positions from which Russia was bombarding a road the Ukrainians desperately needed to use.

The O-0506 road connects Bakhmut to the village of Khromove and then to Chasiv Yar, from where Ukraine’s forces were supplying those on the city’s front line and treating its wounded.

Winning the road — one of only two still-usable routes — would tighten Wagner’s grip on the city.

“At the time the losses in that area of the front were very, very high for both sides,” Golian said.

He estimated that for every Ukrainian killed, Russia was losing seven Wagner fighters — but they were constantly receiving waves of fresh troops to capture the trenches.

Russia’s artillery advantage was also huge, and it was responsible for about 90% of Ukrainian deaths, he estimated. Ukraine only had a quarter of that firepower, he said.

Two units had gone on ahead of Golian’s group, and the news over the radio was bad — there were major losses.

Even so, his group set out for the trenches in their BMPs, a Soviet-era infantry fighting vehicle. One of them was struck by an anti-tank missile on the way. Those who survived pushed on.

There had been fighting here for a very long time. The area was “absolutely covered” with the dead, he said, 40 to 50 bodies that nobody could collect because the area was too dangerous.

And stretching ahead, across several miles, was a labyrinth of trenches to be retaken.

Between three and six feet deep, some of the trenches were flooded, with the water up to his waist. Others had been wrecked by artillery fire.

Golian said their way of moving ahead was twofold. You advance, using your machine gun or submachine gun to fire ahead of you, and, if you encounter an obstacle, you throw a grenade.

The soldiers were supposed to have at least 20 grenades each. Covering each other with fire, they would “cleanse” the area and move forward, he said.

They would gather extra ammunition as they went, exactly as any videogamer might imagine it.

“In every point of active connection with the enemy, there are lots of weapons and ammunition just lying around,” Golian said.

“There are submachine guns, machine guns, anti-tank grenades,” he added. “You just pick it up and keep fighting.”

Threats also came from above. “At any point in time there are six, seven, unmanned aerial vehicles — drones — sitting in the sky above your head,” he told BI.

“All of those drones were completing reconnaissance work” to guide artillery fire, he said.

And most were Russian, in his estimation. It meant there could be no pausing — stay still for more than a couple of minutes and you’d risk an artillery strike on your head.

By now, any overnight anxiety was long gone. It was time to survive.

“There are no feelings about this. There are no feelings,” Golian said, adding: “All of the emotions, they’re switched off. You live on the skills that you acquired.”

Golian finds it hard to explain how he deals with the fear. On the morning of an operation like this “something like a psychological protection” switches on in his head, he said.

Throughout the long bloody day, he and his small group recaptured several hundred feet of trenches, ready for other Ukrainian troops to move into and hold.

He lost comrades. He was also struck by a 120mm shell that wounded his leg.

But he considers himself lucky. “I’ve seen enough pictures when boys, guys were losing all of their limbs. They were losing a whole leg, whole arm,” he said, adding: “You see those pictures around you all the time.”

Golian was rushed away from the fighting in an M113 armored vehicle, where his mud-covered clothes were stripped from his body and he received basic treatment, before being sent on to a hospital.

In the months since, his body has recovered. But he knows that the war is leaving “deep traces” on every Ukrainian who fights.

His sleep is dreamless, his emotions muted.

“The things that used to cheer me up, to make me happy, no longer cheer me up. I’m somehow indifferent to them,” he said. “I stopped feeling, in a bright, distinct way, any positive emotions as well as any negative emotions.”