The Wagner paramilitary group, the spearhead of the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine, announced yesterday the seizure of the city of Bakhmut. But Kyiv hastened to deny it, assuring that his forces continue to defend that city. After this episode of information vs. misinformation and, above all, after ten months of intense fighting that has turned a town inhabited by 70,000 people into ruins, the question arises by itself. Is Bakhmut really key in the development of the war?
Analysts from both sides agree in qualifying Bakhmut as an important regional transport and logistics center. Although it is located in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, much of its population speaks Russian. This argument has been used repeatedly by Moscow to justify the annexation through a self-proclaimed "special military operation".
Although Western military experts - including the head of the US Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, and the head of the NATO alliance, Jens Stoltenberg - refuse to label his possible fall as "symbolic", if Bakhmut were to go to being controlled by Moscow would put both Kramatorsk and Sloviansk within Russian artillery range. The two largest cities in the Donetsk region that Russia is striving to control in order to complete what it calls the "liberation of the Donetsk People's Republic."
You just have to pull the newspaper library to see what Kyiv thinks of this. Going back specifically to last March, it turns out that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, acknowledged to CNN in March his fear that Russian forces would have "an open path" to the two cities, calling it a vitally important tactical position.
It is the same thing that happened with the fighting last summer in the northeast of the country. Ukraine managed to fortify the area and repel Russian attacks by keeping Sloviansk off the radar of Moscow artillery.
Reminiscent of World War I, the fight for Bakhmut has taken place from the trenches in heavily mined terrain and under the intense and destructive hail of rockets.
As a result, most of the pre-war population has long since fled their homes. And the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has attested that those who have decided to stay survive making their lives in the underground shelters that keep them safe from the heavy bombardments that have destroyed hundreds of buildings.
The casualty figures remain classified information, but US officials estimate that tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, many of them convicts recruited by Wagner, have lost their lives in the area. "The same as the Ukrainian troops," they add from Moscow.
Although Reuters has not been able to verify the actual figures, images of battlefields strewn with corpses from both sides are common on social media. Even Prigozhin himself, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, has released numerous photos of his own dead fighters as part of an attempt to pressure the Russian Defense Ministry for more ammunition.
Zelensky described the Bakhmut fortress as a symbol of rebellion that "was bleeding the blood" of the Russian army. Konrad Muzyka, a Polish military analyst who visited the Bakhmut area with his colleagues in March, said after his trip that he thought it no longer made military sense for him to hold the city given its cost in Ukrainian losses.
A bill of human lives that joins that of World War II when the occupying Nazi troops took 3,000 Jews to a nearby mine shaft and walled it up, suffocating them all.
If the fall is confirmed, Bakhmut would be Russia's first major capture since July last year and a victory of great psychological value in order to boost the morale of the troops deployed on the battlefield.
In turn, its loss could undermine morale in Ukraine, even if, as Kyiv's allies say, it is of little strategic value.
To date, holding the city has helped keep Western support intact, showing that the weapons delivered were succeeding in slowing Moscow's advance.
As Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military from the US-based think tank CNA, has stated,
Zelensky presented the US Congress with a battle flag signed by the city's defenders when he visited the city in December and acknowledged to the Associated Press his fear that a Russian victory at Bakhmut would cause the international community, and his own country, to stop. rearmament to formally request peace. Something that the Ukrainian president wants to avoid.
The capture of the city also has a business reading for the Wagner Group and especially for its founder. Hungry for publicity, Prigozhin needs to turn the tables so he can boast of his battlefield successes in the face of sanctions imposed on his activity in the West.
