Over the last several months, Russia would grind out costly gains in the fighting around Bakhmut, only to see Ukraine reverse most or all of those gains a few days or weeks later. This pattern repeated for month after month, with Russia slowly grinding out costly net gains of territory in and around Bakhmut, without ever completely taking the city.
However, in the last 24 hours, Ukraine seems to have made significant gains around Bakhmut in the last 24 hours.
A Ukrainian military unit said on Wednesday it had routed a Russian infantry brigade from frontline territory near Bakhmut, claiming to confirm an account by the head of Russia’s Wagner private army that the Russian forces had fled.
Later in the day, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, said Russian units in some parts of Bakhmut had retreated by up to 2 km (1.2 miles) as the result of counterattacks. He did not give details.
Wagner units have led a months-long Russian assault on the eastern city, but Ukrainian forces say the offensive is stalling.
Snip.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has repeatedly accused Moscow’s regular armed forces of failing to adequately support his men, said on Tuesday the Russian brigade had abandoned its positions.
“Our army is fleeing. The 72nd Brigade pissed away three square km this morning, where I had lost around 500 men,” Prigozhin said.
This follows up on Friday’s news that Wagner Group troops around Bakhmut had run out of ammo.
Suchomimus has a video that includes a hefty doses of both Azov head (I think Mykyta Nadtochiy) discussing the advances and Prigozhin complaining about it.
Significant news? I think so. Sector collapses in a front that Russia has poured so much equipment and manpower into can’t be good news for their war aims.
Is this Ukraine’s much-vaunted Spring Counteroffensive? I rather doubt it, though a full-scale front collapse would likely draw a significant investment of Ukrainian forces here.
Rather, I think this is a fixing attack, one designed to force Russia to keep all currently assigned troops in this sector to avoid surrendering gains, making it impossible to relocate them to areas of the front where the main action will actually fall.
But that’s just a guess…
Tags: Azov Battalion, Bakhmut, Military, Mykyta Nadtochiy, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Suchomimus, Ukraine, video, Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin
[…] Castro dictatorship, and AMLO confirms fentanyl shipments are coming from China BattleSwarm: A Bakhmut Reversal? Behind The Black: China launches cargo freighter to its Tiangong-3 space station, UK regulators […]
A fixing attack makes sense. I think the logic of a main counterattack to the Sea of Azov, cutting off the Crimea from its main supply, followed by dropping the Kerch bridge would seem to be pretty hard to resist.
[…] HMM: A Bakhmut Reversal? […]
You have to hand it to the Ukes for their OPSEC
We’ll see what we shall see. I wouldn’t want to be a Russian soldier in Ukraine, with what’s coming. Not sure I’d want to be a Russian soldier anywhere, TBH.
Ukraine is effectively doing a 21st Century version of the Russo-Japanese War, here. Complete with “disruptive technologies”.
I hope we’re doing a better job of paying attention than the major powers did, back when. There’s a “drone analog” to the disastrous meeting of technology and war-making which resulted in the Somme and Verdun coming up, and I really hope we’re not the dumbasses on the receiving end of it.
Everytime I look at the Ukraine map I can’t understand the strategic value of Bahkmut vs. Horlivka. The former is not as logistically vital to a Western axis of advance for Russia as the latter. Is Bahkmut symbolic or something? Is there something historical that makes this the hill worth dying on for either force?
Anyone that has a take I’d be interested to hear it.
Tactically Russians are stupid. A frontal assault into a city stronghold instead of enveloping it is a bizarre decision.
A long time ago I read a Russian tactical manual (open source). In page after page, regardless of the situation, there would be reserve units in the front moving in a straight-line attack, followed by regular units following in the same straight line to break through the enemy and presumably achieve a glorious battle filed victory. It was ridiculous.
Short of a total Russian collapse (unlikely), there’s really no benefit to Ukraine putting serious resources into retaking Bakhmut. Sure, it’d be a nice propaganda win, but the city itself doesn’t go anywhere, and it’d be a drain on the larger offensive they’ve been preparing for the better part of a year. As long as Russia keeps throwing forces there, Ukraine will keep bleeding them there, but that’s more about Russian obstinance than any real strategic importance since Ukraine retook Lyman.
“Tactically Russians are stupid. A frontal assault into a city stronghold instead of enveloping it is a bizarre decision.”
I feel the same way about Eisenhower’s frontal assault to retake the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge and Westmoreland’s ‘search & destroy’ operations in Vietnam. I wish the Russians had a monopoly on military stupidity, but they don’t.
Fixing indeed.
Because the Spring offensive will be from Zaporizhzhia south to Melitopol & the Sea of Azov, cutting off the Kherson & Crimea Oblasts from Russian support, except for the damaged bridge.
I think the only value to Ukraine for Bakhmut is that the Russians are will to pay a mighty high price to take Bakhmut, and the Ukrainians are willing to make them pay that price.
Russian ” tactics” are the way they beat the Germans. It’s ingrained deep in their DNA.
You smash straight ahead and drown the enemy in Russian blood until your offensive outrun your supplies and/or just runs out of steam. Then you stop, build back up and do it again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The problem now is that their offense keeps going nowhere and they have no Earthly idea what to do next. They will never succeed until someone changes the entirety of the Russian military playback. Which is never going to happen.
“I think this is a fixing attack.”
A “pin” is the necessary prelude to every decisive action.
Find them, FIX them, fight them, finish them.
Bakhmut is important because it was the only part of the front, over the last six months, where Russia made any progress at all. It was also important because it had been assigned to the Wagnor group.
The Russian army isn’t really an army at all, just a collection of smaller armies who hate each other more than the Ukies. Thier approach on the battlefield is more about internal politics. than anything else – people wanting Wagnor to succeed, but also other groups to fail.
The Ukies are probing and testing, looking for weakness they can exploit. But the real goal is enveloping attacks. Russia has about a 3 to 1 manpower advantage. Trading soldiers will not lead to Ukranian victory. Even killing 3 Russians for every Ukranian that dies = loser strategy. Ukraine needs to achieve a 5:1 or 10:1 kill rate to win. If you encircle Russian forces, you can kill huge numbers and/or force retreats from large areas without suffering too many casualties yourself. A frontal assault may win yards, and encirclement will win miles.
So that is the plan – find a weakness in the front, push through, encircle large numbers of Russian soldiers fixed on defending the front line, and force retreat/surrender/death. The Ukies will do with combined arms.
The parallels between Hitler’s fetishization of Stalingrad and the ongoing insanity of Bakhmut should not need pointing out. You don’t fixate on terrain like that, and expect to win wars. Terrain is merely the stage you play on; the important bits are the enemy combatants and weapon systems.
The Russians are currently fixated on Bakhmut, and have exhausted quite a few of their formations trying to take it. To what end? So they can say they’ve occupied it? What good does that do them? It’s not doing anything to protect their fragile logistics lines, nor is it getting the Ukrainians further away from those, either.
Coming days and weeks are going to see the Ukrainians doing more and more “prepping” of the battlefield. That’s not going to leave you with much clue at all about what they plan on doing, because if they’re smart, they aren’t going to telegraph what they have coming for Mother Russia. It’ll be “Feint, feint, strike, feint, strike, feint…” until the Russians are unable to respond. They’re going to make the Russian general staff look stupid and inept, which ain’t going to help Russian morale down at the lowest levels.
After some reading and reviewing tonight, I think that what’s going on right now is purely psychological warfare; the Ukrainians aren’t going to actually do major attacks until they’ve done as much damage as they can to the Russian psyche.
Look at all the lines of cars leaving Mariupol; observe the freak-outs in the Russian commentariat. The Ukrainians are going to keep right on doing this, until they’ve gotten the maximum benefit out of it all, and then they’re going to actually strike. Why waste the ammo and the lives, when the Russians are doing the work for them?
More I see of their operations, the more respect I have for them. I think they’re going to do one hell of a number on the Russians in the coming weeks, and I don’t have clue one how that’s going to turn out.
Russia right now reminds me of that bully in grade school, the one who never had any serious opposition. Until, one day, he did–Then, the little POS folded like a cheap suit. Never played at bullying again, and pretty much became the consummate victim for anyone else with a grudge.
I have a feeling the next few decades are not going to be kind to the Russian Federation. At. All.
Bakhmut made sense during previous year’s Russian spring offensive when it could be a staging point for further westward push. Ever since AUF stopped their advance then, it have stop making strategic sense for Russia. They just want to take it because they have to take it.
@ambisinistral
“Tactically Russians are stupid”
Simple tactics for poorly-trained conscripts who can’t execute a complex plan. Nothing that requires initiative or flexibility, because the Russian state doesn’t want soldiers to start thinking for themselves. Complete disregard for casualties because the state doesn’t care about human life, and assumes – probably incorrectly, given current Russian demographics – that it doesn’t matter how many peasants die because there will always be more peasants to replace them.
Andrew Z,
That’s been my contention from the start of all this, that Putin and his cronies are operating on mental software dating back to the Tsars. Which is demographically and culturally obsolete and entirely delusional.
Stalin probably killed Russia with WWII and his pogroms against his own people, but then again… He was Georgian. Could be that he was playing the long game, and taking revenge against Mother Russia. Hard to say, really… Putin is just the final nail in the coffin.
I think the Russian Federation is going to consist of the former territories of the Grand Duchy of Moscow before this is all over. They can’t keep on with the path they’re taking. All the ethnicities out in the hinterlands are outbreeding the ethnic Russians, who’re immiserated in a stew of alcohol and despotism, and who’re not breeding. Watch as the implications of that play out; it won’t be pretty.