ISW on Russia’s Bakhmut offensive: Russian army repeating same mistakes as in Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk

Russia’s offensive on Bakmut shows that the Russian army did not learn anything from its previous “high-casualty campaigns concentrated on objectives of limited operational or strategic significance”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports.

“Russian efforts to advance on Bakhmut have resulted in the continued attrition of Russian manpower and equipment, pinning troops on relatively insignificant settlements for weeks and months at a time.

ISW notes that the significance of capturing those cities was limited, however, Ukraine’s Armed Forces “essentially allowed” Russian troops to concentrate efforts on those offensives in order to capitalise “on the continued degradation of Russian manpower and equipment over the course of months of grinding combat”. Eventually, according to the ISW experts, Russian forces captured the two cities, at the cost of heavy losses, but the tactical success led to minimal operational benefit, seeing as afterwards the Russian offensive came to a standstill.

Russian troops have been trying to capture Bakhmut since May. Even if the Russian army continues to advance on Bakhmut and forces a “controlled Ukrainian withdrawal from the city (as was the case in Lysychansk), Bakhmut itself offers them little operational benefit”, ISW points out.

“The costs associated with six months of brutal, grinding, and attrition-based combat around Bakhmut far outweigh any operational advantage that the Russians can obtain from taking Bakhmut.

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NYT previously reported that heavy fighting was going on near Bakhmut, with both Ukraine and Russia suffering big losses. According to NYT, the Russians army continues to deploy the PMC Wagner fighters over there, however, they are now also going to be supported by forces that had withdrawn from Kherson.