We do not know if Bakhmut has been reconquered by Russia or is still partly controlled by Ukraine. What we do see is a devastated city, a cemetery of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, collapsed buildings, rubble and the silence of “dead souls”, described by Nikolai Gogol in his journey into deep Russian slavery after the Napoleonic wars.
This city ironed by bombs and artillery is the most grim symbol of a destructive occupation in which, before the war, some 70,000 people lived and today not a single building remains standing. Putin has gone back more than a century in the way he wages war.
It is estimated that more than 300,000 German and French soldiers died at Verdun in 1916, in a battle of attrition in which hundreds of thousands of shells destroyed the landscape. There are still some 800 hectares planted with unexploded explosives.
Verdun 1916, Stalingrad 1942-1943, Hiroshima 1945 and Bakhmut 2023. This is the gloomy journey of the century with the greatest progress in history and, at the same time, the one that has caused the most deaths in acts of war. Proclaiming that a sepulchral city has been conquered or retained seems to me a mockery of the dead buried under the ruins.
Barbara Tuchman's old thesis that all leaders in critical situations, throughout the centuries, knew what they shouldn't do and, nevertheless, did it, and thereby ensured their downfall, can be applied to Vladimir Putin, who he did not measure well the consequences of a reckless decision full of unforeseen events.
He counted neither on the resistance of the Ukrainians with Zelensky at the helm nor on the military and economic aid of the United States and Europe or the expansion of NATO with historically neutral countries such as Sweden and Finland. Russia was prepared to unilaterally annex Crimea and promote the secession of two Ukrainian regions, Luhansk and Donetsk, with a majority of Russian speakers, which today the Kremlin considers de facto Russian territories.
To reconquer Bakhmut is today to control a wasteland of rubble without water, electricity or administration, a ghost city where Russian soldiers will be able to raise the flag and proclaim a victory that does not change the balance of forces of the war. One of the constants of all war conflicts is the absence of truth. Little is known about what Ukraine is doing along the hundreds of kilometers of front. There are no reliable data on the number of deaths on either side. But estimates put the figure at more than two hundred thousand.
Putin has entrusted the Wagner mercenary group with the offensives and resistance in the nerve centers of the front. Its leader is Yevgeny Prigozhin, a convicted criminal who has gone from running a sandwich shop to leading the militia against the Ukrainian army. In fifteen months, Putin has had four generals in chief in Ukraine, which he has been replacing due to his ineffectiveness.
Wagner's boss is the one in command at the front, he criticizes the Defense Minister and the Kremlin's military strategists and threatens to withdraw from Bakhmut starting tomorrow. He is as strong as a demagogue. Hundreds of his legionnaires have died and he asks for more weapons that do not arrive.
Zelenski stood at the G-7 summit in Hiroshima and did not miss the opportunity to draw a parallel between the city devastated by the atomic bomb on Truman's orders in 1945 and the skeleton of Bakhmut destroyed on Putin's orders.
Ukraine puts up the troops and many dead, but it cannot fend for itself. She needs the help of the Western allies. The fatigue and wear and tear of both parties could be the great ally to force a ceasefire and a negotiation in which both Russia and Ukraine will not be able to maintain their positions, because no one will win the war.
In the reflections of Henry Kissinger, who will be one hundred years old on Saturday, he pleads for the mediation of China and also for the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO and the EU. The old artist of realpolitik argues that the war has made Ukraine too strong and it is better to have it in than out. Kissinger's analyzes have changed in fifteen months. The same thing happens to many of us. It is known when a war begins, but not when or how it will end. The global scenario will be different and the protagonists will be others.
