Russia’s claim to victory in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut suggests that the brutal urban strife that marked the deadliest blow of its war in Ukraine may well be over. But what comes next is far from clear.
As Moscow heralds a “Mission Accomplished” moment in its war, Ukraine – while insisting Bakhmut has not completely fallen – sees an opening to seize the initiative from the city’s outskirts if Russian troops no longer push forward. penetrate into the center of the city.
Russia’s capture of Bakhmut would be a powerful symbolic success for Moscow. It would be the first Ukrainian city it has taken since Lysychansk last summer, and be a setback for Kiev, which has expended precious ammunition and sent some of its most capable troops to try to stop Russia’s devastating months-long assault on the city. thwart. Thousands of troops from both sides are said to have died in nearly a year of intense fighting there.
But the city now lies in ruins, and control of the city would not necessarily help Moscow achieve its greater stated goal – capturing the entire eastern region of Donbas – now that Ukrainian forces have exhausted Russian forces and in some areas their defenses have broken through to the city. North and South.
“You have to understand that there is nothing there,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said of the devastated city, once home to 80,000 people, at a press conference in Hiroshima, Japan, seeking help and weapons from the world’s richest democracies.
“They destroyed everything,” said Mr. Zelensky. “There are no buildings. It’s a pity, it’s a tragedy, but for today Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There’s nothing in this room, just soil and lots of dead Russians.
Now that Russia has seemingly taken the city, it must hold it.
However, Ukraine intends to make that proposal difficult by raining artillery on Russian troops occupying Bakhmut, Ukrainian officials said. Military analysts say if Moscow continues to send reinforcements to defend the city, it could weaken Russian forces’ ability to hold back a wider counter-offensive that Ukraine says is about to begin.
a British Defense Intelligence Review said on Saturday that Moscow had “redeployed into several battalions to reinforce its troops in Bakhmut,” calling the deployment “a remarkable commitment” for Russia’s heavily stretched forces in Ukraine.
One of the challenges for Russia is predicting the intentions of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, head of the Wagner private mercenary company, who was at the forefront of the urban fighting. Mr Prigozhin declared victory in Bakhmut on Saturday and said his mercenaries would withdraw from the city on Thursday. But military analysts said it was unclear whether Mr Prigozhin could retreat so abruptly along a hotly contested front line without serious consequences for the Russians in the city.
It was also unclear how much of the city’s Ukrainian forces were still held and whether Russian reinforcements deployed towards Bakhmut would replace Wagner forces or bolster Russia’s teetering defenses on the outskirts of the city.
In recent days, Russian troops have made their way west through the city and fought through a final neighborhood of high-rise apartment buildings, reaching an expanse of garages, farms and open fields to the west. The Ukrainian army said on Sunday it still possesses several buildings in that area.
But even as Kiev’s forces withdrew from block-by-block fighting, they moved reinforcements to the rear positions to secure roads and supply lines west of Bakhmut. And they concentrated on attacking Russian positions north and south of the city. A pitched battle on 6 May broke through Russian lines south of the village of Ivanivske, forcing Russian soldiers into a disorganized retreat.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had recently recaptured high ground on the outskirts of the city and that advance would “really complicate the enemy’s presence in Bakhmut.”
If Ukrainian forces can continue their counterattack, it would put Russia on the defensive across almost the entire front line, stretching for hundreds of miles. For months, Bakhmut has been one of the few places where Russia is gaining ground in the war.
The Ukrainian army said on Sunday it had launched a night attack on the Russian-occupied port city of Berdiansk, the latest attempt to attack occupied territory in the country’s south ahead of a widely anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive. Vladimir Rogov, a Russian occupation official, said a rocket had fallen in the outskirts of the city, but there were no casualties, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
Ukrainian commanders have said their goal in Bakhmut has always been to pin the Russian army into a protracted battle, kill as many of its soldiers as possible, and give Ukraine time to prepare and rearm – with Western weapons – for a wider counteroffensive.
A Russian capture of Bakhmut “will actually mean nothing,” predicted Colonel Serhiy Hrabsky, a commentator on the war for the Ukrainian news media. “The Russians have exhausted their offensive capabilities, which is why they so desperately declare that they have captured Bakhmut.”
While Ukrainians tried to play down Russia’s successes, Russian state media celebrated Bakhmut’s alleged capture on Sunday.
A segment on a leading Sunday morning newscast compared the Battle of Bakhmut to the Soviet Union’s major victories in World War II. A Russian fighter was shown saying he “probably felt the same emotions as our grandpas in Berlin” as Russian troops overran the city at the end of World War II.
The anchor declared, “Mission Accomplished.”
The state-run Channel 1 newsreel quoted statements by President Vladimir V. Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry that partially credited Wagner for capturing the city. Channel 1 also carried footage of gunmen described as Wagner fighters shouting, “Bakhmut is ours!”
But even as the news outlet featured Bakhmut as the main story, one man went unmentioned: Mr. Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner and a close ally of Mr. Putin, who was often at odds with Russia’s military leadership.
The noticeable omission underlined the efforts of the Russian propaganda machine to hide from the Russian people any sign of power struggles among the elite or problems on the front lines.
Sunday morning’s newsreel showed extensive aerial footage of the devastation and devastation in Bakhmut, but claimed that Ukrainian troops destroyed their own city – an echo of Russia’s false narrative when it captured the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol a year ago.
“They were unable to hold the city,” said a reporter on the ground in Bakhmut, referring to the Ukrainian forces. “So they’re trying to level it to the ground.”
Peter Baker contributed reported from Hiroshima, Japan, Anton Trojanovsky from Berlin and Matthew Mpoke Bigg from London.
