Russia’s claim to victory in Bakhmut suggests that the brutal urban strife that marked the deadliest blow of its war in Ukraine may well be over. But what comes next is far from clear.
While Moscow heralds a “Mission Accomplished” moment, Ukraine – while insisting that Bakhmut has not completely fallen – sees an opening to seize the initiative from the suburbs once Russian forces stop pushing forward within the city limits.
Russia’s capture of Bakhmut would be a powerful symbolic success for Moscow, the first Ukrainian city it has captured since Lysychansk last summer, and a setback for Kiev, which has expended precious ammunition and sent some of its most capable troops to to thwart the devastating months-long Russian attack. raid.
But the city is in ruins, and controlling it wouldn’t necessarily help Moscow achieve its greater stated goal – capturing the entire eastern region of Donbas – now that Ukrainian forces have exhausted Russian forces and breached their defenses in some areas in the north and south of the city.
Those gains will allow Ukrainian troops to continue raining artillery on Russian troops trying to detain Bakhmut, Ukrainian officials said. And military analysts say that if Moscow continues to send reinforcements to defend the city, it could weaken Russian forces’ ability to hold back a wider counter-offensive that Ukraine says is about to begin.
a British Defense Intelligence Review said on Saturday that Moscow had “redeployed into several battalions to reinforce Bakhmut,” calling it “a remarkable commitment” to Russia’s heavily stretched forces in Ukraine.
One of the questions for Russia is the intentions of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary company in charge of the city fighting, who declared victory in Bakhmut on Saturday and said his soldiers would withdraw from the city on Thursday. Military analysts said it was unclear whether Mr Prigozhin could withdraw so abruptly along a hotly contested front line without serious consequences for the Russians in the city.
It was also unclear whether Russian reinforcements deployed towards Bakhmut would turn for Wagner forces or bolster Russia’s shaky defenses on the outskirts of the city.
In recent days, Russian troops have been fighting their way west through the city through a final neighborhood of high-rise apartment buildings, reaching an expanse of garages, farms and open fields to the west. The Ukrainian army said on Sunday it still possesses several buildings in that area.
But even as Kiev’s forces withdrew from block-by-block fighting, they moved reinforcements to the rear positions to secure roads and supply lines west of Bakhmut. And they concentrated on attacking Russian positions north and south of the city. A pitched battle on 6 May broke through Russian lines south of the village of Ivanivske, forcing Russian soldiers into a disorganized retreat.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had recently recaptured high ground on the outskirts of the city and that advance would “really complicate the enemy’s presence in Bakhmut.”
If Ukrainian forces can continue their counterattack, it would put Russia on the defensive across almost the entire front line, stretching for hundreds of miles. Bakhmut has been one of the few places where Russia has been gaining ground for months.
Ukrainian commanders say their goal in Bakhmut all along has been to pin the Russian army in a protracted battle, kill as many of its soldiers as possible and give Ukraine time to prepare and rearm – with Western weapons – for a wider counteroffensive.
A Russian capture of Bakhmut “will actually mean nothing,” predicted Colonel Serhiy Hrabsky, a commentator on the war for the Ukrainian news media. “The Russians have exhausted their offensive capabilities, which is why they so desperately declare that they have captured Bakhmut.”
Speaking to reporters at the Group of 7 summit in Japan on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke of the strategic significance of the battle to exhaust the Russian military. All that remained in the devastated city, he said, were “many dead Russians.”