Wonder how and if they’ll pull out. Apparently the largest part of the professional force has been withdrawn/replaced by TDF units already. Still, an encirclement of thousands of them would be horrible for them.
Will also be interesting to see how much offensive potential Russia has left after this. Wagner should be mostly spent after 6+ months of this butchery. Could be like Severodonetsk after which Chechens, LPR and RAF in that part of the front were mostly spent.
TDF units
So armed civilians?
Pretty much
I am not sure you are correct in your second paragraph. The reason why Russian momentum stopped after Severodonetsk was not so much to do with losses but with contracts for a lot of the professional soldiers expiring and not being renewed. The situation is quite opposite now. I also have no idea what kind of losses Wagner have taken but considering that it’s not that big a force yet still keeps advancing while being virtually the only part of the Russian army operating on the the Bakhmut/Artyomovsk section of the front they can’t be too bad. Which is entirely consistent with what we know about how skewed the loss ratios are even when Russia is advancing due to their overwhelming superiority in artillery volumes that prepare the ground beforehand.
But we won’t know for sure until much later after the fact, the fog of war is just too thick right now.
In fact i am more surprised that the city is being taken so soon, i would have thought that Russia would be content to just keep letting Ukraine pour in all of their reserves into this pocket for at least a few months more. The advances that have happened so far from the Russian side have not been the result of any big planned offensives but of opportunistic pushes at the occasional weak point. The fact that the Soledar collapse has led to this chain reaction of rapid advances north of the city is indication that things have gotten really quite desperate for Ukraine in terms of the overall logistical and manpower situation, at least if they still want to try and do a big spring/summer offensive with their new western supplies.
They need to hold back a lot of resources for that but if meanwhile the front collapses what’s the point?
The reason why Russian momentum stopped after Severodonetsk was not so much to do with losses but with contracts for a lot of the professional soldiers expiring and not being renewed.
We don’t really know that’s the case. Same reason has been given for the Kharkiv debacle which happened months later. It might be the whole reason or at least part of it. It is notable though that the Chechens and LPR soldiers that played a huge part in that offensive all but stopped showing up in any major offensive way after that. The Russian regulars and VDV involved too - some of them definitely went to Kherson I’d say. Nonetheless the only fighting force involved in that battle that demonstrated offensive capabilities after Severodonetsk was Wagner.
I also have no idea what kind of losses Wagner have taken but […] they can’t be too bad.
I very much doubt that. Heavy losses on Wagners side have been acknowledged by everyone. Wagner and Prigozhin himself, Russian commentators and channels all say this is the case, because there’s no way they don’t have heavy losses. I mean, we’ve seen the pictures. They’ve been leading constant, heavy assault operations against mostly urban, heavily fortified and mined areas for almost 9 months now. There’s simply no way any force could go through this without heavy losses. The ratio might be skewed (it almost definitely is), but it’d be very surprising if they could fight another prologed urban battle like this. It’s one thing to close this out, a different beast to start something like Bakhmut all over again.
the Soledar collapse […] is indication that things have gotten really quite desperate for Ukraine in terms of the overall logistical and manpower situation
It could mean that, it could also not. Russia’s pullback from Kherson didn’t mean that and the fall Severodonetsk didn’t mean that for Ukraine. I don’t buy these projections anymore either way. We don’t know if these retreats are routs or orderly, if they’re worth it for them or not. Interpreting has just led to false predictions in the past.
The advances that have happened so far from the Russian side have not been the result of any big planned offensives but of opportunistic pushes at the occasional weak point.
We don’t know though if that’s their choice or if they simply lack the strength to do any sweeping moves though. They have tried much more than opportunistic probing in Ugledar eg and they’ve suffered massive losses there. In the push recently and the storming of Pavlovka some months ago they themselves acknowledged “hundreds” of losses among the marines there daily during offensive actions.
Russia is advancing due to their overwhelming superiority in artillery volumes that prepare the ground beforehand
Very much true, what’s interesting though is reports of shell shortages have popped up recently on all parts of the front afaik. Definitely at Bakhmut, Kremenaya and iirc even around Ugledar. Now we don’t know if that means a reduction from 50 to 40k shells a day or how big that shortage is, but there is something going on here. Still outgunning the Ukrainians, but we don’t know by how much.
But we won’t know for sure until much later after the fact, the fog of war is just too thick right now
100%. I just don’t buy into the big copes, rationalizations and hopes for big, sweeping offensives from either side anymore. Predictions and interpretations have proved pretty futile so far, I’m done with them, especially the optimistic ones.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. We seem to have different interpretations of the same observable facts. Calling the withdrawal from the Kharkov front a “debacle” only makes sense if you assume that the capture of territory is Russia’s goal. I believe that is not the case. In my opinion the so-called “massive losses” that you hear about are little more than Ukrainian propaganda. But as i said there is no way to know for sure at the moment so it makes little sense to argue. You seem to have been convinced by the pro-Ukrainian narrative about how the conflict is going and should be going, and because Russia does not do what you expect it to you interpret that as failing. I can only say we will have to wait and see how this all ends.
At the end of the day i remain convinced that the military operation is only a sideshow, the real war is happening on the economic and diplomatic fronts. It is because of their ongoing success there that Russia can afford to be patient and methodical in Ukraine.
There is apparently 60 thousand+ Ukrainian soldiers there, I don’t think they even have a chance to pull out, if they do it’s now or never, but knowing Elensky and their commanders, not a chance, so they will either die or get captured.
Not in the city. 60k in the area, at most.
A Russian explained to me it was known as Bakhmut in imperial Russia, then in the USSR they renamed it to Artomovsk after comrade Artyom, then the Ukrainian bourgeoisie changed it back to Bakhmut after the 90s.
This is probably one of the biggest battles of the war, and I feel like we know almost nothing about it.
