Ukraine making progress in push to retake Bakhmut from Russian forces

Russia’s grip on Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine appears to be loosening as Ukrainian forces continue their push to encircle and liberate the beleaguered city.

Home to 73,000 people before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 of last year, Bakhmut is now largely a pockmarked moonscape of blasted-out buildings. Having experienced some of the fiercest urban warfare Europe had seen since the end of World War II, the city was captured by Russian forces on May 20.

Since the launch of a spring counteroffensive, however, Ukrainian forces have begun operations around Bakhmut, making slow progress in southeast Ukraine, in the regions of Donetsk and Zaporizhia. There, Ukrainian forces, backed by NATO-supplied armor, have been probing for Russian weaknesses but have yet to make a serious breakthrough. Mainly their efforts have been hampered by extensive minefields, well-constructed Russian fortifications and the dominant presence of Russian aviation.

For all that, however, Ukraine insists that it is conserving the resource most vital to its eventual military victory: human lives. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, told ABC News on July 5 that Russian losses are “eight times or even 10 times” higher than Ukrainian ones. Even if this figure is exaggerated, an army conducting an offensive typically loses three times as many soldiers as the defending side. Ukraine is advancing in the south on average a kilometer per day, a European diplomat told Yahoo News.

Gaining ground

In Bakhmut, Ukraine’s achievements are more conspicuous.

Kyiv’s offensive push for the city began in mid-June, according to the Ukrainian General Staff. The British Ministry of Defence assesses that Kyiv has made “steady gains” to the north and south of Bakhmut. In the south, Ukrainian troops have seized positions on the high ground to the immediate west of the village of Klishchiivka, putting the Russian troops in the settlement in the unenviable position of taking fire from elevated positions. In the north, Ukrainian forces made “tactically significant gains,”according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, as they pushed the Russian forces back toward the village of Yahidne.

On Monday, Syrskyi announced that Kyiv had put all of Bakhmut under “fire control,” meaning Ukrainian forces are now within striking range of all Russian targets.

Both Russian, Ukrainian and Western sources point to the deteriorating morale situation among Russian forces in the area, which has led to several instances of localized mutinies as groups of Russian soldiers refuse to fight. Videos of multiple groups of insubordinates have circulated on Russian Telegram, usually with the Russians complaining about heavy losses, inadequate artillery support and meager pay — all criticisms, it bears noting, that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin leveled against Moscow in the lead-up to his mutiny last month. “We asked our commanders to bring us food and water,” one group of Russian conscripts from Altai Krai in Siberia complained. “They responded to us with swear words.”

Russia already paid a high price for Bakhmut.

One unnamed Western official told Sky News it suffered 60,000 casualties during the winter and spring campaign, with as many as a third of that number killed, as a “conservative estimate.” Wagner Group mercenaries took especially high casualties in the campaign, which contributed to Prigozhin’s stunning if short-lived putsch inside Russia. When the city was finally captured in May, some groups of Wagner mercenaries celebrated by waving not the Russian tricolor but their own flag.

Wagner had entirely pulled out of Bakhmut by late June, mere days before Prigozhin mobilized them in Russia to seize Rostov-on-Don, the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District, which is in charge of all the regions Russia “annexed” in Ukraine.

Turning the tables

Ukraine‘s decision to fight a grueling attritional defensive battle became the subject of much criticism, particularly in the West, where analysts and Pentagon officials claimed the most combat-experienced Ukrainian troops were being sacrificed for a place that carried little intrinsic strategic value to the overall fortunes of the war.

Russia will now have a similar choice to make if Ukraine continues its advances to the flanks of the city. Should Russia withdraw to avoid encirclement, it will be difficult to couch that at home as anything other than an abject humiliation given the resources spent on Bakhmut for more than 10 months. Should Russia commit more troops in Bakhmut at the expense of its more secure defensive lines elsewhere in eastern and also southern Ukraine, it could give Kyiv the opportunity for a breakthrough at other points along the frontline.

“The Russian leadership almost certainly see it as politically unacceptable to concede Bakhmut, which has a symbolic weight as one of the few Russian gains in the last 12 months,” the British Ministry of Defence said in its daily intelligence update. But, as is always the case in war, the enemy gets a vote too.