First sign of Russian exhaustion: Ukraine refuses to yield Bakhmut
Putin burns the western freebie
I wrote a week ago that Bakhmut could fall into Russian hands with a heavy heart. A victory for Russia means Putin with a talking point for his domestic audience.
Russian military recruiters have been struggling to recruit soldiers, so the sweet smell of victory in Bakhmut will be a refreshing experience.
Every day, hundreds of Russian soldiers die in Ukraine. The Russian Ministry Of Defense deploys both novel and ridiculous ideas to compensate for the daily burials in Ukrainian lands.
“Some local Russian officials are also setting up mobile recruitment centers in order to advertise voluntary military contract service. A Moscow-based psychiatrist is reportedly calling on suicidal men to enlist. Ukrainian officials observed instances of Russian occupation officials registering male teenagers born in 2006 from occupied Luhansk Oblast for military service”.
The Russian army is already desperate.
Every dead Russian makes recruiting the next soldier a little bit more difficult. No one wants to join the losing company and no one in the world has lost more occupied land than Russia in the past year. Putin should have ordered another round of mobilization. But the fear of an internal backlash has prevented him from doing so.
As a result, Putin resorted to “Silent Mobilization.” No made for TV announcements or ratifications pushed by the Russian legislative assembly. Just a steady recruitment drive without drawing too much attention.
A Russian victory in Bakhmut has the potential to breathe some life into the theory that the Russians will win the Ukraine war if they persist. Putin needs a small trampoline to jump out of silent mobilization.
Keeping Putin away from any victory, no matter how small, is extremely important.
Ukraine in a difficult spot in Bakhmut
As Russia’s eastern offensive intensified in the last two months, it became clear that the Russian army will prioritize capturing Bakhmut and Vuhledar. Russians had invested way too much in capturing Bakhmut, there is no way they will stop attacking the town.
Located between eastern Ukraine and southern Ukraine, Vuhledar is a very vulnerable point for Russia. Ukraine uses this town regularly to launch artillery attacks against Russia. Putin’s thugs have attacked Vuhledar over and over, but Ukraine continues to hold the town with an iron grip.
The Russians attracted global attention to Bakhmut after investing so much resources there for so long. If Russia withdraws, or ceases hostilities around Bakhmut, the western world will learn in unmistakable terms that Russia is a spent force that can’t even win a small town after eight months of effort.
The west will become even more confident as a result.
Putin did not leave himself a choice. He has to win Bakhmut. No matter the cost.
It became obvious that Ukraine was keeping an option open for a withdrawal from Bakhmut when reports came out that they refused to permit aid workers to enter the town.
But.
May be.
Just may be,
Ukrainians may have held out long enough for the Russians to exhaust themselves. Since the start of the Russia’s eastern offensive, Russians have lost a great deal of resources. More than 30,000 Russians have died since the beginning of the year, according to reports from the U.K. Ministry Of Defense.
Russian Forces in Bakhmut are Struggling to Sustain the Offensive
Both the Russian Army as well as the Wagner Mercenary Group are working together to capture Bakhmut. But all is not well between the two factions. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, accused the Russian ministry of defense of betrayal on March 6th.
In a social media post on Sunday, Mr Prigozhin said documents had been signed on 22 February, with ammunition expected to be sent to Bakhmut the next day. But most had not been shipped, he said, before suggesting it could be deliberate.
Separately, in a video uploaded on Saturday — but seemingly filmed in February — Mr Prigozhin said his men feared that they were being “set up” as scapegoats in case Russia lost its war in Ukraine.
“If we step back, we will go down in history as the people who took the main step to lose the war,” he said.
“And this is precisely the problem with the shell hunger [ammunition shortage]. This is not my opinion, but that of ordinary fighters…
“What if they [the Russian authorities] want to set us up, saying that we are scoundrels — and that’s why they are not giving us ammunition, not giving us weapons, and not letting us replenish our personnel, including [recruiting] prisoners?”
I am sorry, Mr. Prigozhin. I don’t think the Russian MOD is deliberately sabotaging your victory parade. Of course, they would not mind if there were a way to bring you down after you shamed them in public every time.
In my opinion, the Russian MOD already rations ammunition across the eastern front. The eastern offensive’s frontline stretches nearly 300 kilometers. The Russians never had the capacity to stay on the offensive for this long, but they threw everything they can into the offensive.
Now, they might be staring at exhaustion. This is the only logical explanation as to why Ukraine would have announced it would stay in Bakhmut, instead of exiting.
“After meeting with top generals on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that both the commander in chief of Ukraine’s military, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, and the commander of ground forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, supported reinforcing Bakhmut’s defenses.
“Both generals replied: do not withdraw and reinforce,” Mr. Zelensky said later in his nightly video address. He added, “I told the commander in chief to find the appropriate forces to help the guys in Bakhmut.”
It is a huge decision. A tactical one. The decision to stay in Bakhmut is certainly going to cost Ukraine. But in their calculation, Ukraine believes the effort to hold Bakhmut will be worth it. According to Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, “Russian military losses near Bakhmut is 1 to 7 in our favor”.
Ukraine’s risk-to-reward ratio favors it heavily, so forcing the Russians to fight in Bakhmut makes sense.
The Ukrainian government isn’t just tying up Russian resources in Bakhmut, they are destroying them. If Russians are losing so many soldiers, I can only imagine the amount of artillery, food and other supplies they will be losing on a daily basis. It would be a tragedy to let the Russians off the hook.
Ego cannot and should not dictate how you act on the battlefield. Losing Bakhmut is not an option for Putin and his thugs, who live, breathe and eat propaganda, as it bursts all the lies they have spread about the special military operation going well for them.
Putin cannot withdraw.
The Enemy is Divided
As a result of months of fighting and social media discussion over Bakhmut, whatever happens in that city will reverberate throughout Russia. It was not necessary to elevate Bakhmut into a make or break fight for Russia, but that is what Putin’s thugs did. Now, they can’t even work together.
In the case of Bakhmut, Russia loses seven times as much resources as Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian secretary of defense. The Russians face severe operational difficulties in capturing Bakhmut. If there was ever a time for the multiple factions in the Russian high command to work together to move forward, it would be now.
Instead of unity, Russian infighting has broken out. Wagner Mercenary Group CEO Prigozhin’s accusation that the Russian MOD has failed to supply ammunition shows a complete breakdown between the two factions.
The Institute for the Study of War, believes Putin might be behind the Russian MOD’s decision to expend Wagner forces in Bakhmut:
“Wagner’s success in Bakhmut thus far has given Prigozhin a major advantage in the information space, bolstering his reputation and increasing his popularity in a way that will likely have long-term impacts in the Russian domestic sphere. Prigozhin is one of the most extreme of the Russian pro-war nationalists. He is one of the very few with a serious military force loyal to himself. He has even seemed at times a possible threat to Putin or a possible successor. Which may be why Putin is allowing the Russian MoD to hang him out to dry”.
This infighting is great news for Ukrainian defenders in Bakhmut.
Is it a good idea for Ukraine to counterattack
Nope.
Not now.
Ukraine can run a series of small scale attacks across the frontline, or they can start with a single axis attack and evolve it into a multi-axis attack.
I think Ukraine should focus on dropping the axe so hard that it creates chaos for the Russian army rather than liberating territory, taking a break, and then counterattacking again to liberate more territory.
To create large scale chaos that forces Russian troops into collapse, Ukrainians need to accumulate as much weaponry and ammunition as possible before launching the counter-offensive. It is more effective to have what is necessary for achieving the goals rather than creating a plan requiring the allies to deliver more ammunition in the future.
Western tanks and heavy weapons are slowly filtering into Ukraine. Although we don’t know the full details yet, the fact that the Patriot Missile System promised to Ukraine in early January has yet to be deployed indicates the time-consuming nature of the deployment process. Ukrainian soldiers need to be trained in a variety of different weapons systems.
It will take time.
Ukraine must remain defensive until it reaches a satisfactory level of training and has sufficient weapons and ammunition on hand.
Ukraine must resist the temptation to take the fight to Russia. For a while, keep the Russians guessing. Make them sweat. Let them talk over and over about where the axe will fall. Let them tire in anticipation, and only then should a counter-offensive be launched against them.
