Trapped in Bakhmut

An assault for the sake of PR

Before the full-scale invasion, approximately 70,000 people lived in Bakhmut (previously known as Artemivsk). Today, the city is nothing but burnt ruins, fully controlled by the Russian army.

Israeli military expert David Sharp points out that 1 August 2022 is purely a nominal date for the start of active hostilities in Bakhmut, as the first attacks on the city began in May 2022. Meanwhile, head of the mercenary Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin says the Bakhmut assault started in October 2022, when the bulk of Wagner forces was deployed there. “But it seems that the beginning of August, when Russians approached the city, would be the most fitting date for the start of the battle for the Bakhmut,” Sharp notes.

For his part, Ukrainian military expert Roman Svitan says that

Bakhmut, located 30 km away, was simply one of the settlements on the way.

The Russian forces were nearing the Ukrainian group from the direction of Izium, Svitan says, but after Ukraine liberated Izium, Bakhmut lost its strategic significance: it became clear that it wouldn’t be possible to surround Ukrainians.

“Prigozhin ended up a victim of his own PR. He bet too much on a successful assault on the city,” Roman Svitan says.

According to a Russian military expert who spoke with us on condition of anonymity, following the successful capture of the cities of Popasna, Lysychansk, and Severodonetsk at the beginning of August 2022, the Russian army attempted to enter the southern-eastern outskirts of Bakhmut. Within three weeks, the Russian forces managed to advance significantly and basically half-encircle the city. However, the fighting became more positional from the end of August — beginning of September.

By mid-autumn, the Russian forces were able to capture a number of settlements on the outskirts of Bakhmut. The attempts to storm the city continued into the winter. By 19 January, the Russian troops took control of the village of Klishchiivka. After that, the constant shelling began. “There are pretty much no civilians left in Bakhmut,” the Russian military expert says, adding that over half of the city’s buildings had been destroyed by March. Ukraine considered withdrawing its forces from Bakhmut on several occasions, but they were not in a hurry to surrender the city, declaring it “a besieged fortress”, the expert notes.

After the city had been taken, Yevgeny Prigozhin said that the Wagner Group lost around 20,000 fighters during the assault. Half of them were former convicts recruited from Russian prisons. It’s very difficult to estimate the real losses suffered by both sides, seeing as neither the Russian nor Ukrainian military provides such information. However, it is clear that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were killed defending the city.

According to Roman Svitan, Bakhmut was completely destroyed by Russian artillery and aviation by the end of spring 2023. Ukraine stopped hanging on to the ashes that remained of the city and withdrew its troops on 20 May. Yevgeny Prigozhin declared that the city was completely under his control, and Putin congratulated all participants of the assault, including the Wagner mercenaries, on the victory.

Symbolic meaning

David Sharp believes that Kyiv has assigned itself an ambitious task of taking the city back. The expert recalls the BBC interview with the commander of Ukraine’s ground troops, Oleksandr Syrskyi: in it, he says that Ukraine is coordinating efforts to recapture Bakhmut.

Syrskyi told BBC that the city’s recapture would have more than just symbolic value: Bakhmut also has strategic importance as the “gateway to other key cities in the region”.

Even back in May, before the battles within the city line had ended, Ukraine’s Armed Forces already launched counteroffensive operations in the area to the north-west and south-west of the city. Eventually, Ukrainians were able to mitigate the danger of its troops being surrounded on the outskirts of Bakhmut and to the east of it.

Two “claws” of the Russian forces, located to the south and the north of the city, were weakened significantly because of these actions. Furthermore, David Sharp speculates that the Bakhmut direction could be a diversionary tactic aimed at distracting the Russian reserves deployed near Zaporizhzhia.

“It’s clear that Bakhmut has a great symbolic meaning for Russia, so they will try to keep the city by any means necessary,” says David Sharp.

Roman Svitan says that keeping Bakhmut is pointless from a military perspective for Russia. Ukraine is taking back the hills located at the flanks near the lowlands of Bakhmut and advancing on the southern higher ground, which stretches up to Horlivka, he says. Svitan adds that Russia is suffering “big losses” in that area: “up to a company, together with equipment, is being destroyed daily”.

“Once the Ukrainian army breaks through the second defence line at the Zaporizhzhia front, Russia will have nothing to cover its gaps in the front line with. It will have to abandon the captured territories. That’s when Bakhmut will be liberated,” Svitan points out.

David Sharp adds that Ukraine is currently holding very important positions near the villages of Andriivka, Klishchiivka, and Kurdyumivka, with heavy fighting underway for control over the hills and roads. Ukraine is slowly moving forwards, but there is still a long way to go, Sharp warns. “Some hotheads in Kyiv are already claiming that the city was encircled and Russian soldiers are trapped there. But we’re not seeing that on the map. There’s a long way to go before this. It is clear that the fighting for the ruins that used to be Bakhmut continues.”