Russian soldiers are just meat to President Putin and the Ukrainians in Bakhmut are the meat grinder

The battle for Bakhmut has descended into a hell-scape reminiscent of the First World War as Putin throws troops into a fight described as 'a meat grinder'.

Russia is pounding Ukrainian trenches in the city - once home to 70,000 but now little more than a ruin - day and night with artillery before troops charge into front-on attacks against machine gun nests.

The no mans land between front lines is now littered with shell holes, skeletons of trees shredded by shell-fire, and bodies of dead soldiers in eerie echoes of Passchendaele, Ypres or the Somme more than 100 years ago.

'They are just meat to Putin,' a commander named Kostyantyn told the FT on a visit to the front. 'And Bakhmut is a meat grinder. For what? A f****** metre of our land.'

This is a battle that has been raging since May, begun when Russian forces were on the march across Donbas under orders from Putin to 'liberate' the region - which Moscow claims as its own.

Now, though, the battle is more symbolic than practical. Most analysts agree the blood price that Russia has paid trying to take Bakhmut - thought to be more than 100 troops per day - is not worth the value of capturing it.

But Putin promised the Russian people that Donbas would be liberated. And the path to that goal - however fantastical - lies through Bakhmut. So the show must go on.

Temperatures in Ukraine are already routinely below freezing, meaning the ground is hard and difficult to dig into.

It means that advancing Russian troops cannot dig themselves defensive positions and are left badly exposed to artillery with most natural and man-made cover already blown to bits.

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