Blood and rubble: Business Insider's reporting on Ukraine's battle of Bakhmut

An aerial view of Bakhmut, Ukraine, on April 26, 2023. Libkos/AP

This week, Business Insider publishes its most extensive work yet on the fighting in Ukraine — an exploration of the horrific struggle for the city of Bakhmut.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the city was, for much of 2023, among the deadliest places on earth.

Our aim is to give our readers a visceral account of what happened there, and its significance to a war that has been raging for almost two years.

We’ve broken our reporting down into different parts — the most significant a 6,000-word narrative depicting standout moments.

A clutch of other stories, publishing through late December, zoom in on particular moment and characters:

We reported how Ukrainian fighters faced Wagner mercenaries, buffeted by thousands of convicts released from Russian prisons, in trench warfare reminiscent of WWI and fierce street-to-street combat.

We also detailed desperate, high-speed evacuations, and the increasingly perilous situation for civilians as the entire city, including hospitals, was leveled. The reporting underscores the enormous toll of this conflict, now about to enter its third year.

Business Insider’s reporters spoke to some 50 soldiers, civilians, medics, aid workers, analysts, writers, and fixers. They reviewed vast amounts of open-source material, too.

While Russia claimed victory in Bakhmut in May of this year, the battle did not pave the way, as Russia had hoped, to major territorial gains in the east.

In a strange twist, the Battle of Bakhmut also played a role in the fate of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin: After excoriating Russia’s top military brass for months over failing to properly equip his Wagner forces in Bakhmut, in June Prigozhin crossed into Russia in an apparent push to confront the Kremlin directly. He died a few weeks later.

BI’s goal was to make events in Bakhmut vivid, to place them in the broader story of the war — and also to humanize what happened.

Bakhmut was once a thriving city that tens of thousands called home, known for its wine and roses.

Now its name evokes literal butchery — the “meat grinder” metaphor employed time and again.

We do describe parts of the harrowing combat that earned it that dark reputation. But our hope is that we convey something deeper, too.

Not just blood and meat, but the friendships, fears, struggles, and hopes of the people who lived and fought there, many of whom never came back.

Credits

Lead reporters: Sinéad Baker and Mia Jankowicz

Reporting: Erin Snodgrass, Sophia Ankel, Alia Shoaib, Jason Corcoran

Editing: Kieran Corcoran, Edith Honan, Kit Gillet, Jennifer H. Cunningham, Julian Kossoff, Lauren Steussy, Ryan Pickrell, Kevin Kaplan

Illustration: Mark Harris

Design & Graphics: Rebecca Zisser, Jenny Chang-Rodriguez, Annie Fu, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol

Translation and interpretation: Katrina Ellis, Dmytro Yakubovskyy, Lada Buskie