The crash and roar of artillery rarely stops in this east Ukrainian city. In the cold and broken houses, residents huddle by candlelight and pray that they have safety in numbers. On the battlefield, soldiers on both sides are dying in droves.

While Ukrainian advances have redrawn the battlefield map elsewhere, the front line in Bakhmut, some 10 miles from the border of Donetsk and Luhansk, has barely moved in four months of heavy fighting.

Of all the battles in the east, President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week, the “most difficult” is here. Yet in this fight for control of a shattered city, military experts say the ambitions of a Russian oligarch, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group, may have eclipsed all strategic logic.

After a disorderly Russian retreat from nearby Izyum, the battle for Bakhmut is no longer part of any coordinated military operation. Instead, Prigozhin is pouring waves of mercenaries from Wagner into battle, appearing to see political advantage in capturing Bakhmut as a military trophy while President Vladimir Putin’s regular forces are on the back foot elsewhere.

Outgunned and outnumbered, exhausted Ukrainian troops are relying on nimbler tactics to withstand the brutal battle, monitoring enemy lines with civilian drones as newly recruited engineers experiment with customized weapons from pop-up laboratories in abandoned buildings nearby.

“To be honest, we have to,” said Vlad, who is overseeing the 93rd Brigade’s effort to refit drones, antitank mines and other weapons so that they are more effective. “The Russians have the soldiers, the guns, everything. We need to be smart,” he said.

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