The head of the Russian mercenaries of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Saturday that his fighters had completed the capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after months of intense fighting. Ukraine has been quick to deny that information. Why is it important whether Prigozhin’s announcement is true or not?
A springboard city?
A regional transportation and logistics hub, Bakhmut is located in Ukraine’s Donetsk, part of the largely Russian-speaking industrialized Donbas region that Moscow wants to annex with its self-proclaimed “special military operation.”
The head of the US Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, and the head of the NATO alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, have downplayed his possible downfall as symbolic, just like Western military experts. But the capture of Bakhmut, if confirmed, would put within Russian artillery range two larger cities in the Donetsk region, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which Russia has long coveted. Moscow needs to control both to complete what it calls its “liberation” from the “Donetsk People’s Republic.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN in March that he feared that Russian forces would have “an open path” to the two cities if they took Bakhmut, adding that his order to defend her was a tactical decision. The nearby town of Chasiv Yar, west of Bakhmut, is likely to be next to come under Russian attack, though it lies on higher ground and Ukrainian forces are believed to have built defensive fortifications nearby.
Western analysts and diplomats are skeptical that Russian forces can quickly capitalize on the capture of Bakhmut, given that they started shelling the city a year agolaunched a ground assault in August and have suffered heavy losses ever 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 seize cities like Sloviansk once they were in control of Bakhmut.
Has there been a massacre in the area?
Ukraine and Russia have said the battle for Bakhmut, which Moscow calls by its Soviet-era name Artyomovsk, was important in destroying and diverting 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 attacks on a heavily mined battlefieldas well as house-to-house clashes and air raids that destroyed much of the city.
Most of the pre-war population of 70,000 or 80,000 people had fled long ago. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that those who stayed survived in underground shelters under heavy bombardment.
Images of battlefields strewn with corpses from both sides appeared on social networks. The death toll is not known, but US officials estimate that tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have fallen, many of them convicts recruited by the Wagner group. Russian officials also claimed that Ukraine has suffered heavy losses. Reuters cannot verify battlefield casualty figures.
Prigozhin, whose Wagner forces led the battle on the Russian side, published numerous photos of his own dead fighters, often as part of an attempt to pressure the Russian Defense Ministry for more ammunition.
Zelensky described the “Bajmut fortress” as a symbol of rebellion which, he said, was bleeding the Russian army dry. 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 to hold the city given its cost in Ukrainian losses.
The city has witnessed massacres before: during World War II, occupying Nazi troops herded 3,000 Jews into a nearby mine shaft and walled it up, suffocating them.
A psychological impulse?
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 series of defeats. Its loss could undermine Ukraine’s morale, even if, as kyiv’s allies say, it has little strategic value.
Holding the city had helped maintain support from Western countries, according to US analysts who are experts on the Russian military. Zelensky presented the US Congress with a battle flag signed by the city’s defenders when he visited the city in December and told the Associated Press in March that he feared that a Russian victory at Bakhmut would provoke calls from the international community and his own country for peacesomething you don’t want to do.
However, Ukraine can take solace in the fact that kept Russian forces at bay for a long time and commanded a high price for Bakhmut, suggesting that any Russian attempt to seize more territory will be just as costly.
A Wagner victory?
The capture of the city would be a boost for Russia’s most prominent mercenaries, the Wagner group, and its publicity-hungry founder Prigozhin. The 61-year-old ex-convict and restaurant magnate, who has faced Western sanctions, has been trying to turn his team’s success on the battlefield into political influence.
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Although mounting evidence suggests that the Kremlin has moved to curb what it sees as excessive political influenceno one could argue that Wagner’s mercenaries, including convicts recruited by Prigozhin, have played an important role as stormtroopers.
Some Western military experts believe Ukraine’s goal was to destroy Wagner as a fighting force in Bakhmut, and Prigozhin conceded that his mercenary force would need additional support from the regular army to push further beyond the city.