Ukrainians fight Russian mercenaries and plummeting temperatures in the Battle for Bakhmut
Standing by a makeshift stove at the bottom of a bitterly-cold ditch, the Ukrainian troops enjoyed a quick tea break.
Suddenly there was a loud whistle and a crack as a Russian artillery round flew overhead and exploded in a field behind them.
The soldiers barely flinched, hardened by months of war. Instead, their focus was on staying warm.
One of them even carried on calmly cutting into a plastic bottle.
Soldiers try to keep warm as temperatures plummet
The water inside had frozen solid as temperatures on the frontline plunged below zero.
Peeling away the plastic, he plonked the giant, bottle-shaped ice cube into a pan to melt.
Then came a second round, this one much closer, smashing into a road above them with a punishing crash.
“That was too near,” said a fellow soldier, before taking a sip of tea from a tin mug.
A Sky News team also in the large ditch had hit the ground at the sound of the first blast and was then ushered towards better cover after the second one – along with the troops.
This is the daily reality for Ukrainian soldiers holding defensive positions in trenches close to the frontline town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Sky’s Deborah Haynes is embedded with Ukrainian forces
Russian forces appear determined to try to take the town after suffering humiliating defeats in other parts of the country.
It has made the Battle for Bakhmut one of the fiercest of the war – described as a “meat grinder” because of the scale of the casualties.
One soldier, a company commander who asked to go by his first name Maks, vowed the Russians would never succeed.
“They will throw up more meat and we will destroy it,” he said. “They will launch rockets, but we will hide and then destroy them. They have no chance.”
In a trip on Monday that was cut short by the artillery attack, Maks and other members of a battalion in Ukraine’s 24th King Danylo Brigade showed Sky News around a line of trenches they were digging as part of efforts to help defend Bakhmut.
It is tough work even without the threat of enemy fire as soldiers must also battle the elements.
Armed with a shovel, a soldier called Serhii cut away at chunks of earth as he made a square-shaped trench.
“We are on our land, we need to defend our land,” he said, his breath frosty. “It’s hard but it’s needed.”
Signs of winter were all around – a rucksack and bedding, layered with frost; specks of white on the hard earth; and a green, woollen hat with a frosted covering, hanging off the bare branch of a tree.
These soldiers must fight, eat and sleep in the cold – but they know the Russians must endure the same, many with worse protective clothing.
Temperatures will likely drop even to minus 30 by January and February.
Analysts have said both sides may seek to slow or even pause the fighting when conditions become too harsh. But Ukrainians say they will push on as they have no other choice.
“We will fight – how can we stop?” said Orest, the battalion commander.
Read more:
Fighting will be at ‘reduced tempo for months’
Ukraine’s armed forces have lost up to 13,000 soldiers since Russian invasion
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How will winter affect the war?
Ukrainian and western officials say Wagner, the Russian private military company, has sent large numbers of mercenaries – including convicted criminals released on condition they fight – to launch wave after wave of assaults against Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut.
Conventional Russian forces, withdrawn from the southern city of Kherson in the face of a Ukrainian counter-offensive last month, have also been added to the fight in recent days, increasing the pressure on Ukrainian lines.
Asked whether the Russians would capture the town, Orest said: “No …we will stop them.”
But Ukrainian troops are paying a heavy price as well.
The commander showed us where Russian rounds over the past two days had crashed into a field close to where his men had been digging, killing one of his soldiers.
This is meant to be a defensive line, set slightly back from the frontline action.
Orest said he has lost a total of seven troops in the past month, mainly doing assaults against Russian positions. He said the nearest Russian point is just over a mile away.
The change of season means there are no longer leaves on the trees, providing top cover from drones, sent to scout targets for artillery to strike – a new peril for both sides.
There is a constant threat of incoming fire – as we later discovered during the tea break.
That artillery attack went on for almost half an hour.
Each time a round struck, the ground shook – a terrifying experience, even from where we had been able to shelter.
Yet this deadly hazard is something the soldiers have grown almost immune to.
After a while, the commander said it was safe to leave.
We made a scramble up a bank of the ditch to our vehicle and sped off. For the troops, they stayed put, dug in for the winter war.
World
Trump vowed to end Ukraine war in first 24 hours of his presidency – nearly 200 days in, could he be close?
Seven hours is a long time in US politics.
At 10am, Donald Trump accused Russia of posing a threat to America’s national security.
By 5pm, Mr Trump said there was a “good prospect” of him meeting Vladimir Putin “soon”.
There had, he claimed, been “great progress” in talks between his special envoy Steve Witkoff and the Russian president.
It’s difficult to gauge the chances of a meeting between the two leaders without knowing what “great progress” means.
Is Russia “inclined” towards agreeing a ceasefire, as Ukraine’s president now claims?
Is Mr Putin prepared to meet with his Ukrainian foe, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, too?
The very fact that we’re asking those questions suggests something shifted on a day when there was no expectation of a breakthrough.
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Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Mr Trump repeatedly vowed to end the war within 24 hours of becoming president.
On day 198 of his presidency, he might, just might, be one step closer to achieving that.
Staff at a zoo in Germany which culled 12 baboons and fed some of their carcasses to the lions say they have received death threats.
Tiergarten Nuremberg euthanised the healthy Guinea baboons at the end of July due to overcrowding in their enclosure.
Some remains were used for research while the rest were fed to the zoo’s carnivores.
Plans to kill the baboons were first announced last year after the population exceeded 40, and protestors gathered outside the zoo to show their outrage.
When the site closed last Tuesday to carry out the cull, several activists were arrested after climbing the fence.
The director of the zoo defended the decision, saying efforts to sterilise and rehome some baboons had failed.
“We love these animals. We want to save a species. But for the sake of the species, we have to kill individuals otherwise we are not able to keep up a population in a restricted area,” Dr Dag Encke told Sky News.
These are not the specific animals involved. File pics: Reuters
‘The staff are suffering’
He said police are investigating after he and the staff were sent death threats.
“The staff are really suffering, sorting out all these bad words, insults and threats,” Dr Encke said.
“The normal threat is ‘we will kill you, and we’ll feed you to the lions’.
“But what is really disgusting is when they say that’s worse than Dr Mengele from the National Socialists, who was one of the most cruel people in human history.
“That is really insulting all the victims of the Second World War and the Nazi regime.”
Josef Mengele was a Nazi officer who performed deadly experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War.
Dr Dag Encke
Zoo animals ‘treated as commodities’
Culling animals and feeding them to predators isn’t unheard of in zoos.
In 2014, Copenhagen Zoo caused controversy by euthanizing an 18-month-old male giraffe called Marius and feeding his body to the lions.
At the time, the zoo said it was due to a duty to avoid inbreeding.
Dr Mark Jones, a vet and head of policy at Born Free Foundation, a charity which campaigns for animals to be kept in the wild, denounced the practice and said thousands of healthy animals are being destroyed by zoos each year.
“It reflects the fact animals in zoos are often treated as commodities that are disposable or replaceable,” he said.
Marius the giraffe was put down and publicly fed to lions at at Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark. Pic: Keld Navntoft/AFP/Getty
Zoo asks for unwanted pets
Earlier this week, a zoo in Denmark faced a backlash for asking for unwanted pets to be donated to be used as food for its predators.
In a Facebook post, Aalborg Zoo said it could take smaller live animals such as chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs, as well as horses under 147cm. It said the animals would be euthanised by specially trained staff before being fed to carnivores like the European lynx.
While some people supported the scheme, saying they had donated animals in the past, others are outraged.
“The very idea of a zoo offering to take unwanted pets in order to kill them and feed them to their predators will, I think, horrify most right-minded people,” said Dr Jones.
Read more from Sky News:
Trump could meet Putin next week
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Dr Mark Jones
Aalborg Zoo has now closed the post to comments and said in a statement: “For many years at Aalborg Zoo, we have fed our carnivores with smaller livestock.
“When keeping carnivores, it is necessary to provide them with meat, preferably with fur, bones, etc., to give them as natural a diet as possible.
“Therefore, it makes sense to allow animals that need to be euthanised for various reasons to be of use in this way.
“In Denmark, this practice is common, and many of our guests and partners appreciate the opportunity to contribute.”
World
Trump could meet Putin as early as next week to discuss Ukraine ceasefire – White House official
Donald Trump could meet Vladimir Putin in person as early as next week to discuss a ceasefire in Ukraine, a White House official has said.
They said the meeting would be conditional on the Russian president meeting his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Sky News’s US partner network NBC News reported.
It came days before the White House’s deadline for Russia to reach a peace deal with Ukraine or face severe economic penalties, which could also target countries buying its oil.
Asked during a news conference at the White House if the talks would take place, Mr Trump said: “There’s a very good prospect that they will.”
He said it had not been determined where the talks would take place, but added: “We had some very good talks with President Putin today.”
However, he said: “I’ve been disappointed before with this one.”
Asked if Mr Putin made any kind of concession to lead to the development, Mr Trump did not give much away, but added: “We’ve been working on this a long time. There are thousands of young people dying, mostly soldiers, but also, you know, missiles being hit into Kyiv and other places.”
More tariffs ‘could happen’
Mr Trump also said he could announce further tariffs on China similar to the 25% he announced on India over its purchases of Russian oil.
“Could happen,” he said, after saying he expected to announce more secondary sanctions intended to pressure Russia into ending its war with Ukraine.
Earlier, he imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods, on top of a previous 25% tariff, over its continued purchases of Russian oil.
India’s foreign ministry spokesperson said the additional tariffs were “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”.
Vladimir Putin welcomes Steve Witkoff during a meeting in Moscow. Pic: Sputnik/Reuters
It came after Mr Putin held talks with Mr Trump‘s special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow, with the meeting lasting around three hours.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump said Mr Witkoff “had a highly productive meeting” with Mr Putin in which “great progress was made”.
He said he had updated America’s European allies, and they will work towards an end to the Russia-Ukraine war “in the days and weeks to come”.
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Correspondents in Washington and Moscow break down a busy day of diplomacy
‘The war must end’
Mr Zelenskyy later said he and Mr Trump spoke on the phone after the meeting. He said “European leaders also participated in the conversation” and “we discussed what was said in Moscow”.
He added: “Our common position with our partners is absolutely clear: The war must end. We all need lasting and reliable peace. Russia must end the war that it started.”
Mr Zelenskyy later said: “It seems that Russia is now more inclined to agree to a ceasefire.”
He added that the pressure on Moscow “is working”, without elaborating, and stressed it was important to make sure Russia does not “deceive us or the United States” when it comes to “the details” of a potential agreement.
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