Today,Bakhmut is a wasteland,inhabited by just 4000 citizens. The city has been devastated by fighting since the Russians commenced their operations in the area in May last year. Fighting ebbed and flowed for months,largely taking a back seat to the other battles in the Donbas at places such as Lyman and Sievierodonetsk. But towards the end of 2022,Yevgeny Prigozhin decided that this would be the place where his Wagner Group would demonstrate its ability to succeed on the battlefield where the Russian Army had not.
Months of Russian artillery barrages and human wave attacks have gradually gained territory around the city. Despite the Ukrainian preparations,it is part of war’s brutal calculus that if the enemy is willing to sacrifice everything for an objective – and your side isn’t – they will eventually prevail.
Therefore,the Russians,using their Wagner mercenaries,pardoned convicts,recently mobilised troops and a smattering of their more elite units,may force a Ukrainian withdrawal from Bakhmut soon. While Putin will laud this as a Russian victory,the reality is that his battered troops have captured only rubble. Bakhmut,even before it was destroyed,was of limited strategic importance and unworthy of such investment in firepower and lives.
This battle has come at a cost to the Ukrainians as well,but they have made the Russians suffer. So while the Ukrainians fight on,at some point they may decide they have eked all they can in their blooding of the Russians,and conduct a fighting withdrawal north-east to the better defended Kramatorsk.
This battle has highlighted the major asymmetries between how the Russians and Ukrainians are fighting this war. As Lawrence Freedmanrecently described,Russia and Ukraine are fighting two different wars.
The first significant asymmetry is that Russia is fighting a total war,whereas Ukraine is fighting a limited war. There is a tragic irony in this as the stakes for Ukraine are existential and they are not for Russia. But still,Russia is targeting every part of the Ukrainian state – its economy,its legitimacy,its physical and cyber infrastructure,its cities,its people,its culture and its army. It has assumed a “no holds barred” approach in this war.