Russian troops spent nearly a year carving a path of devastation and death in their attempt to encircle the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, and by March it looked like they were close to succeeding.
“The mobs are closing,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group that spearheaded Russia’s bloody advance.
He was wrong. The pincers have never closed and now Ukrainian forces have pryed them open further, retaking in a matter of days north and south of the devastated city the territory it took the Russians many weeks to take.
Moscow’s forces still control most of Bakhmut itself, Ukraine’s recent gains around the city are not great, and there is no guarantee they will last. But for the first time in months, Ukrainian soldiers are on the offensive, and the momentum in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war seems to have shifted in their direction — at least for now.
Continued Ukrainian advances would reverse the situation of a few months ago, risk encircling and trapping the Russians in Bakhmut, and show that the deep, fortified lines the Russians have built across Ukraine can be broken. Success around Bakhmut would also be a major morale boost to Ukraine and a serious blow to Russia, denying it the one military achievement that seemed within reach for months.
The potential turnaround comes as Ukraine prepares for a wider counter-offensive, aimed at a dramatic breakthrough in a war that has turned into a grueling brawl, with much bloodshed but little ground gained. While the dynamics around Bakhmut are somewhat specific to that battle, Ukrainian commanders say they hope to build on the lessons learned there when they try to attack other places along the Front line of 600 miles.
“When you retreat, it is very difficult to stop,” said Colonel Andriy Biletsky, the commander of Ukraine’s 3rd assault brigade, whose soldiers broke through Russian lines for the first time last week. “If you want to grow, it’s very hard to start.”
He cautioned that he would wait to see if “there’s a streak of five, six, seven wins” before assessing the state of the fighting, but he was hopeful.
“We can say that the phase of blind defense at Bakhmut is over and now at least there will be moves from both sides,” he said.
“Wagner’s men entered Bakhmut like rats in a mousetrap,” the commander of all Ukrainian ground forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, told soldiers during a visit to the front on Tuesday.
General Syrskyi and other Ukrainian commanders warned that fighting is still fierce and a desperate battle is still being waged in Bakhmut, where Russian troops are trying to drive the last Ukrainian defenders out of the city’s ruins. Five months after they first fought their way into the city, the Russians control about 90 percent of it.
“The enemy is advancing somewhat in Bakhmut itself and completely destroying the city with artillery,” Hanna Mailar, a Ukrainian deputy defense minister, said Tuesday night.
Ukrainian commanders want to keep a large Russian force tied up in and around Bakhmut to prevent redeployment to other areas that could soon be attacked. They said Russia was already sending reinforcements to the Bakhmut area, including tank units and new fighters, to try and stop the Ukrainian advance.
Yet Ukrainian commanders said on Tuesday their soldiers continued their advance.
Maj. Oleksandr Pantsyrny, the commander of the 24th separate assault battalion “Aidar”, said Ukraine “has regained the initiative on the flanks, north and south of the city”.
Konrad Muzyka, a defense analyst for Rochen Consulting, said the recent Ukrainian gains “exposed fundamental Russian weaknesses: a lack of coordination between regular Russian formations and Wagner units, poor communication and morale.”
Ukraine has been insisting for months that it needs a large influx of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other weapons from its allies before launching its counter-offensive. Mr Muzyka said it was remarkable that Ukrainian gains around Bakhmut were made “without using large Western-supplied platforms, such as Bradley IFV or Leopard tanks.”
Ukrainian forces were able to advance about two kilometers in some directions on Sunday and Monday, Colonel Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for the Ukrainian forces fighting in the east, said during an appearance on national television.
Without going into details, he said the march forward had been uneven, with battles being fought over areas the size of three football fields in some locations. He also warned that Russian troops were still trying to launch counter-attacks in some places.
While his claims could not be independently verified, Russian military bloggers have also noted Ukrainian gains around Bakhmut over the past week.
Southwest of Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders have reported an advance through a forest area near the village of Ivanivske, and appear to be advancing toward Klishchiivka, a small village that Wagner mercenaries claimed on Jan. 19 after weeks of fighting.
The village is on high ground, and whatever army commands it, it occupies a commanding position overlooking major roads to Bakhmut.
Northwest of the city, the armies appear to be fighting for control of the high ground around the Berkhiv Reservoir. Without calling a retreat, Russia’s defense ministry said over the weekend that its troops were regrouping around the reservoir to “strengthen the defense line”.
Colonel Cherevatyi said there had been 36 different “clashes” between the opposing armies around the city in the past two days and warned it was a fluid and dynamic situation.
The staunch defense of Bakhmut, a small town of limited strategic value, has come at a great cost, with some of the most veteran soldiers there killed in the past year. But it has prevented the Russians from moving on to besiege the larger cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Ukrainian officials say it also played a vital role in weakening the Russian military. As long as Russian losses exceeded Ukrainian losses, officials in Kiev have maintained, the battle made sense from the grim perspective of battlefield math.
With the Ukrainians no longer just taking blows, but moving forward, Ukrainian commanders and officials hope that the calculation will change again and that it will be Russia that has to decide what price it is willing to pay to hold on to a city that is being wiped out the map from day to day.
Once a city of about 70,000 in the Donetsk region, known for its sparkling wine and salt mines, Bakhmut has come to symbolize the brutality of this war.
Ukrainian military officials stressed that what happened around Bakhmut is now only a partial success.
The situation in the city has become so dire, Ukrainian soldiers said, that their commanders are only sending volunteers.
“When you enter Bakhmut, you should know that you may not make it,” said one soldier. Exhausted and teary-eyed, he didn’t mention his name as he sat under a bus stop near the battered city.
His comrade said, ‘It’s insane to be in Bakhmut now. The shelling never stops.”
Carlota Gall contributed reporting from Kiev. Natalya Novosolova And Anastasia Kuznitsova contributed research.