The head of Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary outfit, said Sunday that fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut is getting “fiercer” as Ukraine keeps pouring troops in to defend the area.
“The situation in Bakhmut is difficult, very difficult, with the enemy fighting for each meter. And the closer we are approaching the city center, the fiercer fighting is growing, the more artillery and tank being used against us,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Prigozhin said Ukraine is “supplying endless reserves” but insisted the Wagner fighters would keep “moving forward.” Since mid-January, Wagner and the regular Russian forces have been making gains around Bakhmut and recently took the eastern district of the small city, which has a pre-war population of 70,000.
Also on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Russia had suffered 1,100 dead troops in just a week of fighting for Bakhmut, but the number is not verified. Zelensky is justifying his decision to keep defending the city by claiming Russia is suffering massive casualties attempting to capture it.
While exact numbers on both sides are unknown, it’s clear Ukraine is taking heavy casualties in the city. German intelligence estimated in January that Ukraine is losing hundreds of soldiers each day in the brutal battle. Ukrainian troops are being sent into what they call the “meat grinder” in Bakhmut with little training, support, or weapons.
If anything, the battle over Bakhmut is more symbolic for Ukraine. For Russia, it’s just another mining town.
It also sits astride major transportation routes.
It’s a logistical hub, the intersection of two main roads and a north-south railroad. It is also the last line of defenses built up for 8 years. I don’t know if defending that place to the last man is the smartest move, but it is more than symbolic. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bakhmut+ukraine+map&t=h_&ia=web&iaxm=maps
Which means that after the coup in 2014, and the subsequent shelling of Donbas (with the loss of 14,000 Russian-speaking souls), they knew it would come down to this.
The single largest group of those 14,000 killed in Donbas were Ukrainian regime troops. Maybe they all spoke Russian, but at least some probably didn’t. And since Donbas is only a little over 40% ethnic Russians, it’s likely that many of the dead civilians (second largest group) were Ukrainian speakers.
The Ukraine does not have a supply of ‘infinite reserves’ to expend on defending Bakhmut and it’s delusional to think they do. Shades of Goebbels’ propaganda in the last days of Berlin come to mind. The Russians have taken a lot of casualties, but the Western narrative is burying a key point: this is normal when attacking a defended city. Anyone with any military knowledge knows that a few men- or even a single well placed one- defending a built up area can delay a far greater attacking force and inflict casualties at a higher rate. My take on it is that the Russians, having reverted to old-school tactics, are content to move slowly and simply grind the Ukrainians down; they are fine with letting Zelensky sacrifice his young men for upvotes on Tik Tok. In the end, Bakhmut will fall- my guess is rather sooner than later- and taking it is pretty good work for a bunch of ‘poorly trained Russians armed with shovels’.
1100 dead Russian troops? Anything Zelensky says needs to be taken with a grain of salt. He is just saying that so that he can keep foreign money and arms coming into the Ukraine. The guy is pure B.S. He is scamming his own country.
Russia has 10 artillery tubes for each Ukrainian artillery tube and the kill ratio is 8 to 10 Ukrainians for each Russian KIA.
Russia is firing 15,000 artillery round a day while Ukraine can only shoot 4,000.
The population of Ukraine after the great emigration is about 18 million total while Russia can mobilize up to 25 million soldiers alone.
Do the math. Perhaps peace talks are a better alternative!
Yes, do the math.
But remember the old computing maxim: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Propaganda on both sides makes figuring out how this war is going, and how close we are to a larger conflagration VERY difficult to determine.
That was confirmed last week by an American mercenary who is there. He said the shelling is 24/7, just brutal.
Douglas Mcgreggor has been saying that since last year.
By the Ukrainian governments own admission during the fighting early last summer in Sievierodonetsk, they let it slip that they were losing approx 900 men a day, and that was just in one sector of front. Its baffling they are wasting all these lives trying to hold on to Bahkmut which is a lost cause for them..
Yes simple math on production and use of artillery on a World War One level.
The foot soldiers are used as currency. Not even as pawns, who are simulacra of reality. Neither side sees them as humans.
~ twenty million during the German invasion …. Are we having a discussion about Russian seriousness when defending their vital interests?
The blood is on the hands of the Biden Admin. and all DC Ghouls!
No, the blood is on the Kremlin Ghouls, namely, Putin. He invaded Ukraine and not the other way around.
A fan of the MSM propaganda I see. Perhaps you lived in a cave in 2014?
I hear this everyday here from the Pro Putin War team. But it’s ok because I say the same about you.
Russia could have enveloped Bakhmut and simply starved it out, but they’ve instead turned it into a Ukraine fed furnace. Maybe the idea is to make this the decisive battle of the war.
I hope you’re right. If the Russian intent is to make Bakhmut the decisive battle of the war, it presumably means that their objective is to secure Donetsk/Luhansk, declare “victory,” and return to frozen conflict. Which is probably the best outcome that either side, especially civilian non-combatants on either side, can hope for.
We’re way past minimizing casualties, thanks to the US. The Russians are fighting for a secure border, not money or global dominance. They definitely have an end game in mind. They’re going to establish what they think are acceptable and sustainable facts on the ground and then we’ll see if they were right.
A frozen conflict is now the best case for NATO/US. They can rebuild Ukraine’s army, and support continued cross border shelling, insurgency, and terror attacks deeper into Russia.
The Russians are now chewing up Ukraine’s strength. They’d be fools to let up and allow it to recover. They need to end this.
The best antiwar is peace. But total victory has been a substitute. Frozen conflict is not.
Yes, they need to end this.
And the best they’re likely to be able to do by way of ending it is a return to frozen conflict. Their window for ending it in any other way ended about 50 weeks ago.
The Western media relying on Ukraine’s propaganda has described the Wagner forces as both “penal battalions” doing “human wave attacks” and as the best forces Russia has, so Ukraine is killing off the cream of Russia’s power.
As for numbers, the one constant is the constant lies of Ukraine about every number. So if they say it, we know it is not true.
“Zelensky is justifying his decision to keep defending the city by claiming Russia is suffering massive casualties attempting to capture it.”
1/ At same time, mainstream news has long repeated that Bakhmut has ‘little strategic value’ and is mainly ‘symbolic’ for Ukraine – though, periodically, it allows otherwise:
“Bakhmut’s strategic value, military analysts say, is as a crossroads for some of the region’s highways. Capturing the city would not guarantee that Russia could make major advances in the east, but it would better position its forces to do so.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/11/world/europe/russia-ukraine-drone-strikes.html?searchResultPosition=2
2/ Zelensky himself just admitted as much:
“In an interview with CNN yesterday, Zelensky at last admitted Bakhmut’s vital importance to Ukraine. ‘We understand that after Bakhmut they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction…That’s why our guys are standing there.’”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/08/as-bakhmut-falls-us-may-turn-from-ukraine-starting-with-pipeline-story/
The war will keep going so long as there are money and bodies involved. Just as was the case in Afghanistan.
https://www.theinteldrop.org/2023/03/12/massive-media-coverup-after-putins-hypersonic-missiles-decimate-nato-command-in-ukraine/
Massive Media Coverup After Putin’s Hypersonic Missiles Decimate NATO Command in Ukraine