Bakhmut Is Where Russians Go To Die
Bakhmut Is Where Russians Go To Die
And possibly the Russian empire
Bakhmut meant nothing to Ukrainian identity ten months ago. Located in a geological punchbowl, the city is not strategically significant, and the shrinking Ukrainian position there means nothing in real military terms. It is simply the place in Ukraine where the most Russians go to die, right now, and for the last nine months. “Bakhmut Holds!” is now a grim national motto inked in blood. Mostly Russian blood.
Whether Bakhmut holds or not, Russian forces have, and still are, being destroyed in the fight to take it. We already know the current Russian offensive will culminate here, though not exactly when, or how many lives and weaponry will be consumed reducing the Bakhmut salient, or what nub of that salient will remain in Ukrainian hands when the effort to take it ends. Early signs indicate that the Second Battle of Bakhmut may be over and a new phase of the war already begun.
Hang on to your Level IV protection hat.
Wagner attacks have been quite reduced this week versus the previous week, leading to speculations that Yevgheny Prighozin may have expended his offensive potential and be looking to conserve his own power in a shifting political landscape. Regular Russian formations are also being attrited around Bakhmut, especially at Vuhledar.
Ignoring calls to retreat from Bakhmut, Ukrainains report they are “are managing to keep Russian units at bay so ammunition, food, equipment and medicines can be delivered to defenders.” Russians were reportedly pushed back from the T0504 highway today.
Casualty ratios have reportedly been as high as 7:1 in Ukraine’s favor around Bakhmut. This is reportedly no longer the case. However, even a 1:1 loss ratio could justify continued resistance if it exhausts Russian shell stocks at exactly the right time, meaning immediately before a Ukrainian counterattack.
Everything happening there right now is about that looming offensive. Reports on Friday that Ukrainians were already pushing back at the flanks of Bakhmut, to keep Russia tied down there just a little bit longer, were followed on Saturday by social media videos of Wagner positions being cleared out around Bakhmut, infantry fighting vehicles counterattacking near Bakhmut, and mechanized columns approaching the area of Bakhmut. Today, Russians are reportedly being pushed back from the T0504 highway into the city.
Of course, social media is a curated perspective. Different reporters will hear from different units, just as battalion commanders seldom have a larger picture of any battle than their own lane within a brigade’s operations, let alone the whole war plan. Reports and opinions will differ. Casualties subtract from potential Ukrainian offensive power. All these concerns are valid.
Nevertheless, pushback is clearly underway. In fact the Ukrainians are almost going out of their way to make sure we, and presumably the Kremlin, can see them doing it.
To date, Ukraine has been superb in the defensive role, less successful on the offensive. Two victories last year — a grinding, slow one in Kherson, followed by a lighting strike in Kharkiv that showed the limits of Ukrainian power as well as their military potential — have inspired western friends to provide new weapons. Better yet, a warm winter and conservative energy policies in Europe prevented Russian “energy war” against the west from having musch effect. This has made states like Germany bolder.
Small numbers of western tanks and armored fighting vehicles have arrived in Ukraine during recent weeks, but at least three new volunteer corps-level “Offensive Guards” (Гвардія Наступу) formations specifically built up for breakthrough are the more significant development. While they will not make up the bulk of Ukraine’s available forces, the existence of multiple spearheads suggests mutiple targets, which is consistent with past Ukrainian offensive operations as well. Two corps can attack at one time while the other recuperates or waits in reserve.
Weather is our best oracle for what comes next. There has been some rain this week, turning the ground into mud. Bakhmut will see cloudy skies and rainfall throughout next week, but then during the first seven days of April the area may see a relatively dry, even slightly sunny, spell. This window of opportunity during the spring mud season may invite Ukraine to undertake a major offensive around Bakhmut, potentially destroying a large amount of Russian combat power concentrated there, as well as other points along the line of contact.
Even with great numbers, it is impossible for Russia to be equally strong everywhere at the same time on 600 miles of front. Lanchester’s square law, an equation used to study battles, applies to this aggregate theater of war, but the effects will be seen locally. “If Wagner retreats from Bakhmut, the whole front wil collapse,” Prigozhin warns. Low troop density and poor organization left the Kharkiv front vulnerable to a surprise offensive last year.
Of course, this was made possible by the Russian defense of Kherson, which was responsive to a Ukrainian offensive telegraphed months in advance to draw as much RuAF combat power across the Dnipro as possible. Telegraphing the Bakhmut offensive now, perhaps Kyiv is thinking they can repeat that trick.
A second operation to cut Putin’s “land bridge” to Crimea, whether in Zaporizhzhia (likely) or by crossing the Dnipro (less likely), seems reasonable as follow-up to a new crisis for Russia in Bakhmut that requires reinforcements from elsewhere in the line.
Recent RuAF offensives around Kupyansk have further exhausted mobilized reserves. Along the Dnipro, constant harassment attacks and withering counterbattery fire weaken the forces defending the new fortification lines on the doorstep of Crimea. Somewhere, at some point, something will have to give and Ukraine hopes to flood the resulting gap, wherever it appears.
Even if they can win that battle, though, final victory is at least one more battle away, in Crimea.
Dispersed by HIMARS, then degraded by fire while attacking Bakhmut, the Russian Armed Forces (RuAF) and private military contractors (PMCs), chiefly Wagner, are supremely vulnerable to mechanized counterattack.
That is exactly what M30-series rocket artillery systems were designed to achieve against Russian formations during the late Cold War. Ukraine is reportedly receiving newer, longer-range rockets and already using American gliding bomb munitions for standoff strikes in this mode.
Degradation by precision fire this way has been the dominant mode of Ukrainian action so far in the war and that will not change, even with the addition of mechanized maneuver. This will become very apparent in the culmination of their spring and early summer offensives as attention shifts to Crimea.
A sucessful Ukrainian counteroffensive would bring the peninsula under “fire control,” the term used for harassing fire on ground lines of communication (GLOCs) such as the Dnipro bridges. If the UAF can bring the peninsula and the Sea of Azov under fire by the end of summer, resume the interruption of water through the North Crimea Canal, and strike the Kerch Strait Bridge again, Crimea will simply become untenable for Russian defenders.
This is a tall order, but it also does not require sustained, bloody assaults to remove the occupying force. Just a successful offensive that brings them to the gates of Crimea and a steady supply of ammunition thereafter.
Indeed, ammunition supply is the core question now. Western partners have ramped up production and Ukraine has built their own production lines. Millions of shells will be delivered by the end of the year. Weight of fire has remained in Russia’s favor overall, until now, but there are places such as the lower Dnipro where Ukraine has developed an edge.
Furthermore, the war is trending towards longer-range strike munitions. Having wasted their prewar stock of cruise missiles on apartment buildings and electrical infrastructure, Russian industry is not producing new missiles any faster in wartime.
Ukraine is simultaneously ramping up production of their new domestically-produced Hrim-2 (Грім), which has 500 km (310 miles) of range and carries a 500 kg (1,100 lb) warhead, which should cover all of Crimea, and a new variant of the old Smerch MLRS rocket with the same range as HIMARS. Ukraine has used a mix of unguided and precision fire, trending towards precision, and this will continue throughout the year, at longer ranges than before.
Command is divided in Moscow and paranoia is endemic. Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB) produced a shoddy army, with the result that “the FSB does not trust Russian military leadership and is conducting inspections of Russian equipment accordingly,” Ukrainian General Staff officer Andrii Rudyk says. The Institute for the Study of War assesses that “FSB markings on Russian equipment and weapons components, if confirmed, would have broader implications for the relationship between the FSB, the Russian DIB, and the broader Russian military apparatus.”
Either FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov has instructed the FSB to conduct these investigations at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin, or Bortnikov has issued this directive independent of Putin. In either case the FSB appears to be directly inserting itself into the inner workings of the Russian DIB, likely penetrating equipment acquisition and inspection processes. The KGB (the FSB’s predecessor) notably penetrated the Red Army and Soviet defense industry in a similar fashion. [Emphasis mine]
A return to the old Russian habits: autocratic, centralized war economy, matched by the return towards the loyalty-based, decentralized mobilization system of empire. Whereas the FBS is tracking every microchip from Belarus, which has become a key supplier of electronics to the Russian DIB, and coercing quality control out of corruption-hollowed DIB companies, no equivalent effort has been applied to training every Russian soldier.
This is quite normal in Russia. Different regions have different forces with different training. Volunteer regiments and PMCs will have their own training and doctrine. According to ISW, the new trend in the RuAF is “permanent assault units to break through Ukrainian positions” using tactics that appear to have been modeled “after the Wagner Group‘s small scale assault tactics in the Bakhmut area.”
The Russian military is likely attempting to concentrate combat ready forces and equipment in permanent formations trained to conduct small-scale assaults while distancing severely degraded formations from offensive operations of tactical importance. Russian forces are reportedly employing these assault formations to attack well-fortified Ukrainian positions and conduct urban warfare. These non-doctrinal formations would likely struggle to conduct a mechanized advance across open country in Ukraine, and Russian forces are likely implementing them for conditions on the current frontlines and not for any wider operational goals. {Emphasis mine]
This is opposite trajectory from Ukraine, which is learning to build and sustain a mechanized attack in open country. One side of the war is about have tank armies while the other side is trying to perfect the storming party. One side of the war is building up missile stocks now while the other is struggling to maintain production.
These trend lines intersect at Crimea. Everyone on both sides understands control of the peninsula is the endgame. The war will probably not end this year, but it could very well be won or lost by August.