The offensive has petered out
Bakhmut is a city in the Donetsk region of Ukraine where around 70,000 people lived before the start of the full-scale invasion. Today, it’s almost entirely destroyed. Ukraine’s forces have been trapped there, half-encircled, for months. The majority of the city blocks are currently captured by the Russian army. The highway used for ammunition deliveries and troop rotations is constantly being shelled by Russian forces. However, Ukraine’s army continues its resistance from multi-storey buildings in the west of the city. Deadly street battles are ongoing.
White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby thinks that Russia’s full-scale attacks in Donbas have petered out: “Last December, Russia initiated a broad offensive across multiple lines of advance, including toward Vuhledar, Avdiivka, Bakhmut, and Kreminna. Most of these efforts stalled and failed. Russia has been unable to seize any strategically significant territory.” The price of these attempts, especially in Bakhmut, according to Kirby’s data, was incredibly high. Russia exhausted its military reserves and forces.
Battle for Donbas
Israeli military observer David Sharp reminds readers of Novaya-Europe that active hostilities in the area of Bakhmut started back in May 2022. “In wars, a location, not even the most strategically important one, often becomes an arena for legendary battles, a place for both sides to use maximum force,” says David Sharp. “This happened with Verdun during WWI and Stalingrad during WWII. But if Germans had been able to pass the odd hundred of metres that separated them from the Volga River, nothing would have changed.”
In spring 2022, after Russian forces had withdrawn from the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and parts of Kharkiv regions, their focus shifted to the so-called “battle for Donbas”. The Russian plan was, according to David Sharp, to encircle and destroy a huge Ukrainian grouping in the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration by attacking from the “Izium ledge” and from another side via Bakhmut. That would have allowed Moscow to announce total control over the Donetsk region. By July, the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk had been captured, and the forces moved towards Bakhmut. After the scattered Russian troops fled the Kharkiv region in September 2022,