© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A general view shows a building damaged by a Russian military strike, amid their attack on Ukraine, in the frontline town of Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine February 27, 2023. REUTERS/ Alex Babenko/File Photo
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By Andrew Osborn
LONDON (Reuters) – Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday his Wagner fighters had completed the capture of the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut after months of heavy fighting, a claim Ukraine has denied.
Here’s a look at the significance to both sides of the largely ruined city at the center of the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.
SPRINGBOARD?
A regional transport and logistics hub, Bakhmut is in Ukraine’s Donetsk, a part of the largely Russian-speaking, industrialized Donbass region that Moscow wants to annex with its self-proclaimed “special military operation.”
US Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin and NATO alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg downplayed his potential downfall as symbolic, as did Western military pundits.
But the capture of Bakhmut, if confirmed, would put within range of Russian artillery two largest cities in the Donetsk region – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – which Russia has long coveted. Moscow must control both to complete what it calls its “liberation” of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told CNN in March he feared Russian forces would have “an open road” to the two cities if they took Bakhmut, and said his order to hold it was a tactical decision.
The nearby town of Chasiv Yar, west of Bakhmut, would likely be next to be attacked by the Russians, although it is on higher ground and Ukrainian forces are said to have built defensive fortifications nearby.
Western analysts and diplomats doubt Russian forces will be able to quickly capitalize on the capture of Bakhmut given that they began bombarding the city a year ago, launched a ground assault in August and suffered significant casualties since. .
Russia’s chaotic withdrawal from northeastern Ukraine last year also deprived it of territory that would have made it easier for its forces to capture towns like Sloviansk once they had control of Bakhmut.
DEATH ZONE?
Ukraine and Russia have both said the battle for Bakhmut, which Moscow calls by its Soviet-era name Artyomovsk, was important in destroying and distracting each other’s forces ahead of an expected major Ukrainian counteroffensive. .
Reminiscent of World War I, the fighting involved trenches and relentless artillery and rocket fire on a heavily mined battlefield, as well as house-to-house clashes and air attacks that destroyed much of the city. .
Most of the pre-war population of 70,000 to 80,000 people had long since fled. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said those who remained were living in underground shelters under heavy shelling.
Images of battlefields littered with corpses on both sides have surfaced on social media. Casualty figures are classified, but US officials estimate that tens of thousands of Russian soldiers – many of them convicts recruited by Wagner – were killed. Russian officials also alleged high Ukrainian casualties.
Reuters is unable to verify battlefield casualty figures.
Prigozhin, whose forces Wagner fought for the Russians, posted numerous photos of his own dead fighters, often as part of an attempt to pressure the Russian Defense Ministry for more ammunition.
Zelenskiy described the “Bakhmut Fortress” as a symbol of defiance which he said was bleeding the Russian army dry. His aide Mykhailo Podolyak said the battle had pinned down some of Russia’s best units and degraded them ahead of Ukraine’s expected spring pullback, backed by the West.
Konrad Muzyka, a Polish military analyst who visited the Bakhmut region with colleagues in March, said after his trip that he thought it no longer made military sense to hold the town given the scale and cost of Ukrainian losses.
The city has seen massacres before: During World War II, Nazi occupation troops rounded up 3,000 Jews in a nearby mine shaft and walled it in, suffocating them.
PSYCHOLOGICAL BOOST?
If confirmed, Bakhmut would be Russia’s first major capture since July last year and a victory on the battlefield that would boost morale after a string of defeats.
Its loss could undermine Ukraine’s morale, even if – as kyiv’s allies say – it is of little strategic value.
Keeping the city had helped maintain support from Western countries, proving it was making a difference, according to Michael Kofman, a Russian military expert at the US think tank CNA.
Zelenskiy presented the US Congress with a battle flag signed by the city’s defenders when he visited in December and told The Associated Press in March that he feared a Russian victory at Bakhmut would trigger calls from the international community and his own country to ask for peace, something he does not want to do.
Ukraine can take comfort in the fact that it held back Russian forces for so long and secured such a high price for Bakhmut, suggesting that any Russian attempt to take more territory will be just as costly.
VICTORY FOR WAGNER?
Capturing the city would be a boost for Russia’s most prominent mercenaries – Wagner – and their publicity-hungry founder Prigozhin.
The 61-year-old former convict and restaurant magnate, who is sanctioned in the West, seeks to turn his team’s success on the battlefield into political influence.
As mounting evidence suggests the Kremlin has taken steps to curb what it sees as its excessive political influence, no one can dispute that Wagner’s mercenaries, including convicts recruited by Prigozhin, played a role. major role as assault troops.
Some Western military experts believe Ukraine’s goal was to destroy Wagner as a fighting force in Bakhmut and Prigozhin admitted that his mercenary force would need additional support from the regular army to continue advancing beyond it. beyond Bakhmut.
(Reporting and writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)