The fight for Bakhmut in east Ukraine continues as Russian forces close in and Ukrainian soldiers repel them. In one fortified gun position, Bakhmut’s defenders are using a machine gun first invented almost 140 years ago. The Maxim gun, a belt fed machine gun, has become one of the reliable iconic weapons of the war.
"It only works when there is a massive attack going on…then it really works," Borys, a soldier fighting for Ukraine, told the BBC. "So we use it every week".
Ukraine has become a battlefield where advanced weaponry such as the IRIS-T air defense system and hypersonic missiles are being used for the first time. It’s a place where drones dominate the airspace and social media pages fill up with footage of every success and failure. But it’s also shown that older tactics and proven weapons can still be useful in a conflict as brutal and protracted as the war in Ukraine.
