“The Battle for Bakhmout: Ukraine and Russia’s Fierce Conflict”

Kyiv announced on Sunday that it would almost no longer control the city of Donbass. Wagner’s boss wants the Russian regular army to relieve his militiamen.

Ukrainian tactical maneuver as a prelude to an encirclement or defeat after ten months of fierce fighting? On Sunday, the day after the Wagner mercenary group and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the city of Bakhmout had fallen, Ukrainian ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrsky admitted that his army now only controls a part “insignificant” of the ravaged city, while ensuring that it progressed on its flanks and could claim to encircle it.

A few hours earlier, on the sidelines of the G7 in Hiroshima, the Ukrainian president had used an ambiguous statement – “Bakhmut is only in our hearts” – before stating that“Today [les Russes] are in Bakhmout [mais la ville] is not occupied by Russia”. “I can honestly say that the photos of destroyed Hiroshima remind me of Bakhmout, he added. There is absolutely nothing left alive, all the buildings are destroyed […]absolute and total destruction.”

Dantesque fights

Assaulted since May 2022, the city of Donbass of 70,000 inhabitants before the war, known for its sparkling wine, is therefore in the process of being taken by Russian forces, mainly militiamen from the Wagner group, if it has not already been done. Exhausted by fierce fighting, artillery and trench warfare which is reminiscent of certain battles of the First World War, Ukrainian soldiers remain present around the city, especially in the north and south where they have recorded progress in recent weeks. They also launched counterattacks on the western flank.

“The importance of defense [de la ville] remains topical. It gives us the possibility to enter it in case of a change of situation, which will certainly happen, claimed on Telegram Oleksandre Syrsky. We continue to advance on the flanks in the suburbs, we approach the capture of the city in a tactical encirclement. In other words, the Russian victory is not one, and the Moscow fighters will soon be trapped.

Wagner’s boss, Evgueni Prigojine, said on Saturday that his men will not wait and that they will be relieved by regular army soldiers. “By May 25, we will completely search the town, create defensive positions and hand it over to the military to deal with. On our side, we will go back to the basics,” he asserted. He once again accused the Russian army general staff of not supporting him. “We didn’t just fight with the Ukrainian army in Bakhmout, we fought [aussi] beaten with the Russian bureaucracy, which was putting a spoke in our wheels.”

Butcher’s shop

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which publishes a daily bulletin of troop movements, doubts the feasibility of Wagner’s plan. “Withdrawing while the troops are still in contact with the enemy is an extremely complicated task which Wagner’s forces are unlikely to be able to complete within five days”, indicates his note of May 20. The Ukrainian soldiers, present in the suburbs of Khromove and Ivanivske, remain capable of targeting the Russian fighters deployed in Bakhmout with their artillery. A possible relief by the regular army also seems compromised as relations are bad with Wagner’s mercenaries. “It is more likely that the redeployments of Russian battalions serve to secure the flanks of Bakhmout under threat”, note l’ISW.

Moscow must also reckon with the global counter-offensive announced by Kyiv as the obsession with seizing a city nicknamed “the meat grinder” greatly weakened his forces. On May 1, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed that more than 100,000 Russians had been killed or injured since December, mostly in Bakhmout. An exorbitant price to pay for a city that has nothing strategic about it.