I thought we could do with a topographical map, found here:
https://en-us.topographic-map.com/map-jmrgp/Ukraine/
The elevation is in feet... the lowest at the Donetsk in the north is at ~50 meters, the highest in the SE of the map is at ~305 meters.
Bakhmut town center is maybe at ~80 m
Chasiv Yar is around 250 m
This town seems more defensible for me than Bakhmut, which advantage is laying at the Bakhmut river and it acts as a center for roads and railroad. Now as the M-03 is lost, and the railway junction is in Russian control, the importance basically vanished.
So Chasiv Yar is more like a collection of smaller settlements bordering each other, at an elevation with woods screening around. From the north and south there are mine/quarry things too. Also has the canal from the east, and some bodies of water spotting the landscape.
From the topographical map we can know that the canal meanders more or less on top of the ridge towards the north.
I added couple of screenshots of Google maps. There is no street view just uploaded photos. We can see these aren't hard to climb mountains just pleasantly rolling hills, with occasional difficult spots. Nevertheless these hills can be transformed to the advantage of the defender.