Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
- The bloody battle of Bakhmut continues to wage as Russia and Ukraine both face mounting losses.
- Military experts are increasingly concerned about Ukraine's defense of the minimally-important city.
- Ukrainian losses in Bakhmut could hinder a more strategically critical counteroffensive in the future.
As the monthslong Battle of Bakhmut wages on, military experts and analysts are increasingly concerned that Ukraine is wasting precious resources on a hopeless fight in an approach that could have devastating consequences down the line — even as Ukraine doubles down on its perilous defense of the eastern city.
After months of brutal fighting, Kyiv continues to insist that the future of the war depends on the defense of Bakhmut, where both Ukraine and Russia have suffered staggering losses in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war thus far.
Months after analysts first began predicting the fall of Bakhmut, analysts are suggesting the town could be seized by Russian forces in the coming days, especially as Ukraine's position grows increasingly dire.
Yet, despite the resources committed to the battle from both sides, Bakhmut remains a minimally-important city, strategically speaking. The one-time mining town's location would not necessarily offer Russia a wide-open pathway to claiming the rest of the region and the city itself is now nearly ruined following months of brutal fighting; but still, the battle continues, with neither side eager to give the other a decisive win.
While Ukraine has not released specific casualty numbers from the ongoing battle, estimates indicate such significant losses that government officials and analysts are increasingly counseling Ukraine to cut its losses in Bakhmut, lest it be left without the necessary resources or manpower to launch a more strategically-sound counteroffensive later this year.
Ukraine, meanwhile, continues to argue that the fight is crucial in its efforts to deplete the supply of Russian troops and ammunition in the long term.
"When the history books get written, Bakhmut is going to be a big battle because for one side or the other, it's going to look like a pretty big miscalculation," said Paul D'Anieri, a political science professor at the University of California, Riverside and the author of "Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War."
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Ukraine isn't giving up on Bakhmut even as conditions worsen
Ukrainian officials as high up as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continue to stress the importance of maintaining control of Bakhmut, while simultaneously emphasizing the damage the country has already done to Russia's position.
The strongest evidence offered by those remaining experts who support Ukraine's decision to stay in Bakhmut is the fizzling nature of Russia's offensive near the city, which is already burning out after beginning last month. Across the front line, Russia is conducting some of the lowest rates of local offensive action in recent days, according to a UK intelligence assessment from last week.
The British Defense Ministry attributed the slow pace to depleted Russian "combat power," and said the personnel losses are affecting both traditional Russian troops and members of the Wagner Group, the powerful Russian paramilitary organization that sparked global outrage by offering convicted prisoners a chance at freedom in exchange for their fighting in Ukraine.
Wagner soldiers have played an outsized role in the battle of Bakhmut, where its poorly-trained convicts are serving as "cannon fodder" amid a ruthless fight, the National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said last month.
In a Thursday assessment, the Institute for the Study of War, said the slow pace of Russian attacks in Bakhmut suggests the Wagner Group's offensive in the region is likely nearing its end.
"The best estimates we have are that the Russian military and Wagner Group are a spent force," D'Anieri said. "They can't engage in offensive operations for the next couple of months and that's because they've lost so many resources in and around Bakhmut."
The ISW in mid-February laid out the small victories Ukraine was ostensibly securing in resisting Russian attacks in Bakhmut, including forcing Russia to expend much of the Wagner Group's forces, and depleting the high-value Russian airborne forces sustaining attritional advances.
"ISW continues to assess that Ukraine's decision to defend Bakhmut is likely a strategically sound effort despite its costs for Ukraine," the think-tank said last month.
Meanwhile, the value of troop morale and maintaining the Ukrainian spirit cannot be underestimated, D'Anieri said.
"Bakhmut is not symbolically unimportant at this point. If you think about the number of Ukrainian soldiers who have died there, there's always this notion that they died in vain," D'Anieri said of the possible repercussions should Ukraine pull out.
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Experts are increasingly concerned about Ukraine's future fight
But even as Ukraine is decimating Russia's forces near Bakhmut, intelligence suggests that Ukraine is suffering similar losses — a reality that could have graver consequences for the smaller country.
Western concerns about Ukraine's dedication to fighting in Bakhmut are not new, but more and more experts are increasingly worried about how Ukraine's losses in the city will impact a future offensive, which is expected to come in the spring or summer and which is likely to be a more strategic attempt at reclaiming occupied land, D'Anieri said.
Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at the Center for Naval Analyses, visited Bakhmut in early March and described witnessing worsening, worrying conditions for Ukraine's chances in the city.
"I think the tenacious defense of Bakhmut achieved a great deal, expending [Russian] manpower and ammunition. But strategies can reach points of diminishing returns, and given [the Ukrainian Army] is trying to husband resources for an offensive, it could impede the success of a more important operation," Kofman wrote on Twitter earlier this month.
Hopes of a spring counteroffensive rely solely on the arrival of military aid pledged by Western allies and effectively-trained troops, an anonymous Ukrainian official told The Washington Post this month, and the fighting in Bakhmut has left many of the country's most experienced soldiers dead or injured.
"If Ukraine is not able to field a counteroffensive later this spring or summer and if the reason they can't do it is because they don't have the troops," D'Anieri said, "then Bakhmut will have proven to be a Russian strategic victory."
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