In the ‘Bakhmut meat grinder’, deadlocked enemy forces slog it out

In a smothering fog cloaking the woods of the Donbas, the sound of artillery takes on a spooky, disconnected quality.

Guns crack nearby, invisible among the skeletal branches. Shells whicker in the gloom towards the Russian lines around the key city of Bakhmut, distant thuds marking when they hit their targets. When the Russian guns fire back, it's with a different sound, the crump of incoming fire.

Dug into a copse of thick scrub, a self-propelled howitzer of the 24th mechanised brigade waits for its orders as neighbouring guns fire, hidden too among the winter branches on a low ridge line.

The crew smoke, waiting for coordinates to fire to come over the walkie talkie. The fog means no drones are flying - but the relative paucity of incoming Russian shells makes the soldiers nervous.

"I don't like it when it's so quiet," says Andrii, one of the crew. "It makes me tense." Except it isn't really quiet. "The fog is tactical," he says in a grim joke, aware it is giving them respite. "For a while they weren't firing back at this village. But now they know that we are here."

He adds by way of explanation: "Eighty per cent of the population around here are pro-Russian. The ones who weren't have left. Most of those who still remain are waiting for the Ruski mir [the Russian world] to come. It wasn't like when we were fighting in Kherson. Then the civilian population seemed genuinely happy to see us."

When fresh ammunition comes, the men manhandle the heavy, slippery shells through the mud to where their gun is hidden.