/ world today news/ Russian troops continue their confident advance on three flanks from Bakhmut – north, west and south, writes the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW). In the northwestern direction, attacks are being carried out against Ukrainian positions from Artyomovskoe (formerly Khromovo), assault units have already entered the outskirts of Bohdanovka, and the Ukrainians have been forced to withdraw from previously occupied positions near the Bakhmut-Gorlovka railway line passing through Pliers.
Volunteer formations (such as “Hispaniola”), units of the 98th Airborne Division, 78th motorized rifle regiment “North-Ahmat” and other formations operate near Bakhmut.
In addition, in the area of Klescheevka, Russian troops are accelerating their combat operations. In particular, to the east of the village, Ukrainian units were thrown back to Lake Alabaster (it is assumed that Hispaniola fighters are operating here).
Now the positional battles continue to the northwest, west and southwest of Bakhmut (including near Andreevka and Spirnoi, where units of the 6th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 2nd Army Corps of the LPR are successfully operating).
In addition, Russian units continue to expand the zone of operational control west of Bakhmut, where the road to Ivanovskoye and Chasov Yar passes. ISW writes that in the direction of Ivanovo, the progress along the front is at least 3 km.
Journalists from the American publication Business Insider visited Ukrainian positions in the vicinity of Bakhmut and prepared several publications.
American military officers called the Battle of Bakhmut “the bloodiest” and compared it to the “Meat Grinder of Verdun” of 1916.
After it, during the First World War, the German and French troops gathered in the area of the so-called fortified zone of Verdun: in an area no more than 15 km wide, about 2-2.5 million soldiers from both sides were concentrated.
In the battle for Bakhmut, according to Business Insider and ISW, about 100 thousand soldiers are involved on both sides. Despite the different scale, however, both battles are fundamentally similar in operational and tactical pattern: it is an example of a battle of attrition with relatively little and slow progress and heavy casualties.
The strategic importance of Bakhmut as a transport and logistics center through which roads and railways pass is great. But not as big as, for example, Mariupol or Kupyansk.
Now the battles are fought in urban areas (these are the settlements of Klescheevka, Spirnoe, Bogdanovka, Artyomovskoe, which were almost completely destroyed during Ukrainian shelling), and hand-to-hand combat is sometimes fought in fields, forests and trenches.
Business Insider attributes the brutality of the ongoing battle for Kupyansk to the widespread use of drones.
“Both sides can see exactly what the other is doing, forcing the enemy to adopt defensive tactics that are also typical of the First World War,” wrote military observer Sinead Baker.
– “The appearance of open areas means quick death from artillery, tank or sniper fire”.
Despite the fact that the surroundings of Bakhmut are full of soldiers, even the settlements look like ghosts: everyone is hiding in the ruins of destroyed buildings or basements.
Military expert James Patton Rogers of Cornell University said in an interview with Business Insider that the widespread use of drones is completely changing the nature of modern warfare.
First, the troops were forced to use additional defensive measures in the construction of trenches.
Second, drones contribute to the death toll. Third, the psychological burden on soldiers increases: they are in constant stress, not knowing whether the enemy has spotted them from a drone or not.
Drones also reduce the military effectiveness of even tanks and heavy artillery.
Following the publication of an article on Business Insider, the Minister of Strategic Industry of Ukraine Oleksandr Kamyshyn announced that next year the Ukrainian defense industry will increase the production of drones. It promised to produce more than 10 thousand units of medium-range strike drones and more than 1,000 long-range ones.
Kamishin also promised that in December he will start mass production of cheap FPV drones (they played the main role in the battle for Bakhmut): the Ukrainians are supposed to produce 50 thousand of these drones.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy promises even more: supposedly in 2024, the Kyiv army will receive 1 million drones of various types. True, even Western experts are skeptical of such promises.
The Center for East European Studies (OSW) writes that the Ukrainian army is extremely unhappy with the shortage of combat drones, which are still mostly bought by volunteers.
Centralized drone deliveries remain small and irregular. Only one of the airborne assault brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Avdiivka has received about 700 drones in the 2 months since the start of the Russian offensive near Avdiivka – this amount is enough for only a few days of use.
This means that the command of the armed forces of Ukraine, and even more so the ministers, are very far from the realities of modern warfare.
Translation: SM
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