As the fighting for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut approaches its ninth month, a growing number of military experts are concerned that President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s decision not to surrender the city is a waste of valuable resources for the Ukrainian armed forces, Insider writes.

Despite the significant resources that both Russia and Ukraine have sent here, for several months experts have emphasized that Bakhmut remains a city of minimal strategic importance. The capture of the former mining town would not necessarily give Russia a platform from which to launch attacks to conquer the rest of Donetsk Oblast, and the town itself has been reduced to ruins.

But the president of Ukraine directly contradicted this assessment of the military situation, saying in a speech to CNN reporters on March 7 that Russian forces would have an “open path” to capture key cities in eastern Ukraine if they took control of Bakhmut.

“We understand that after Bakhmut he could go further. He could go to Kramatorsk, he could go to Slovyansk, it would be an open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other cities of Ukraine, in the direction of Donetsk,” he warned.

“When the history books are written, Bachmouth will be a big battle because it will look like a miscalculation on one side, whichever side it was,” said Paul D’Agnieri, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. Riverside and author of Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War.

The Russians exhausted their forces in the “meat grinder” near Bakhmut

Analysts who support Zelenskyi’s decision to try to maintain control of Bakhmut mostly point to the fact that, despite sporadic progress, the Russian offensive there has waned since early February.

The British Ministry of Defense in an assessment last week noted that the slow pace of the Russian advance was due to the exhaustion of the “combat capacity” of Moscow’s forces, both from the point of view of Wagner’s mercenaries, who initially led the offensive, and from the point of view of regular Russian troops being drawn here in increasing numbers to support the offensive.

The US Institute for the Study of War also noted last week that the slow pace of Russian attacks on that front suggests that Wagner’s mercenary offensive is coming to an end.

“The best estimate we have is that the Russian military and Wagner’s group are exhausted,” D’Agnieri says. “They won’t be able to launch offensive operations for the next few months, and that’s because they’ve lost so many resources in and around Bakhmut,” he adds.

Regarding the possible consequences of Ukraine’s departure, D’Agnieri also says that “Bakhmut is not devoid of symbolic significance at this time. If you think about the number of Ukrainian soldiers who died there, there is always the opinion that they died in vain.”

Ukrainian military in Bakhmut (PHOTO: Ignacio Marin / AFP / Profimedia)

Ukraine, in turn, lost many soldiers defending the city

By the way, in the article of Bild journalists, which caused a stormy response in Ukraine after its publication on March 6, it is said that the political leaders of Kyiv, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, began to consider the city as a symbol of resistance to the resistance of the invading forces, thousands of people. mercenaries of Wagner’s group under the leadership of Yevgeny Prigozhin die here.

In this article, published by German journalists with reference to several anonymous sources in the political leadership of Ukraine, it is said that there is a disagreement between Zelenskyi and the military leadership of the country, which, like Western analysts, considers Bakhmut not an important strategic city and that leaving here will lead did not have a decisive influence on the Donbas Front.

Another article by The Kyiv Post journalists, published on the same day as Bild, quotes several Ukrainian soldiers fighting on the Bakhmut Front and accuses them of not being protected by the leadership in Kyiv. The Ukrainian military called the front a “meat grinder” because of the large number of casualties on both sides.

The large number of Ukrainian casualties in Bakhmut is also increasingly worrying Western analysts, who are now interested in how the long-awaited spring offensive of Kyiv will affect the consumption of important resources here.

Kyiv’s next offensive will show whether Zelensky was right or not

Michael Kofman, director of Russia-related research at the US Center for Naval Analyses, told Insider that he recently visited Bakhmut and witnessed the deteriorating situation for Ukrainian forces and Kyiv’s chances of maintaining control of the city.

“I believe that the tenacious defense of Bakhmut achieved much by exhausting the Russian forces and their ammunition. But strategies can reach points of diminishing returns and taking this into account [armata ucraineană] trying to gather resources for an offensive, [apărarea Bahmutului] it can affect the chances of success of a more important operation,” says Cofman.

Hopes for a successful Ukrainian offensive this spring rest almost entirely on new military aid promised by the West and effective training of new Ukrainian soldiers after most of the experienced soldiers died in the first year of the war.

“If Ukraine is unable to launch a counteroffensive this spring or summer, and if the reason for this is that it does not have enough troops, then Bakhmut will be a strategic victory for Russia,” D’Agnieri says.

​Czech President Petr Pavel, a former NATO commander, issued a similar warning a day ago, saying Ukraine may have only one offensive chance to defeat the Russian army before “war fatigue” and support for Kyiv become increasingly important in the West. .

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