Could someone also clarify the situation in Bakmut for me? I am not 100% certain what the status of the town is, and why it matters so much?
So, I'm a dumbass, and I'd recommend doing your own research, but as I understand it. (this is wordy don't read if it's boring lol. I'm essentially re-hashing what the youtuber Perun says - he's great, hard recommend, knows his stuff and is wittier than me.)
The situation in Bakmut is essentially incomprehensible to anyone not in military intelligence right now (and I'd imagine even they aren't totally sure. (the Americans probably know tbh)). We've been getting a lot of claims, lead by the Wagner PMC group grandstanding that their offensive in the city has finally succeeded, with their boss, Preghozin (probably spelling this wrong) taking center stage as usual. It seems likely that Wagner have actually make some kind of breakthrough, though how large, how permanent, or if this is even true at all remain to be seen. Western media (and, as far as can be seen) have been forewarning a Ukrainian defeat at Bakmut for months, but as of yet this hasn't materialized, and instead the Ukrainians have been making the Russians pay hard for all steps forward.
Why Bakmut?
Bakmut was selected as one of a number of cities for the Russian Winter Offensive of 2022. As far as I know, none of them have been captured (anyone can correct me here) but some - specifically targets selected for the Russian Army (as opposed to Wagner) turned into absolute bloodbaths, and basically had Russian (probably barely-trained conscripts, based off of behaviour and gear) just kind of walking out into open ground and getting sent straight back to Russia in bodybags by the Ukrainian defence forces.
Bakmut was likely made part of this because no.1 it's a moderately locally important transport hub, and no.2 it was an achievable target in the eyes of Russian command.
At the end of Summer, the Russians were in a bad way. Anticipating little resistance at the start of the war, the Ukrainian invasion has taken the absolute worst course for the Russians, and is shaping up to last at least into 2024, and cost huge amounts. The Ukrainian summer offensive of '22 had cut really quite deep into areas the Russian Federation had annexed, and despite the substantial limitations of the Ukrainian military, it looked like Russia was taking a bit of a pasting.
If you are a high-up in the Russian military, you can say whatever you want on TV, but people stop believing this quite as much when conscription ramps up, and more and more bodies come home (or go missing) from the front.
The solution was to score some easy victories, that would at least be somewhat strategically important, but critically could be really hyped-up as big wins.
This has failed to materialize. The Russian Winter offensive has stalled quite hard, in some cases scraping mere kilometers out of the Ukrainians, and at huge cost. Every day Russia is in Ukraine, attrition of gear, men, airframes, apcs, tanks, whatever is high, and when you're assaulting targets, and especially well-defended, stubborn targets that attrition speeds up. The Russian economy is shaky, and eating through that old soviet gear is firstly going to eventually put you in a situation where you run out, and secondly, puts Russia in danger of being able to use this USSR inheritance as a deterrent for future wars. Once you run out, you run out, and the capacity of Russian industry and economy to replace these losses faster than the Ukrainians can inflict them is uncertain at best.
One of the many unique elements of this war is the constant feed of information in the digital sphere.
Bakmut is a particularly active combat zone (look at arial pictures of the city if you can, and then compare them to like, pictures of cities in ww2) and is producing a lot of stuff. In the 24hr news cycle, where both supporters and detractors of the war (and both pro-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin) are constantly hungry for evidence and justification that they were right all along (gotta get those twitter ratios!), and the absolute shitshow that is all the cyberwar psy-op fake information out there are all constantly feeding us information, and it takes really quite the discerning eye to tell truth from fiction. As in, nearly impossible.
At this point, if either side were to prevail, it would be a significant morale hit to the other, simply because of how MUCH the city has cost. At times it's taken weeks for Russians to take single streets, and the Ukrainians have gotten really good at booby-trapping positions they fall back from. But if one side wins or loses, it probably isn't the end of the war. It might show us how the war might start to end, or the shape of fighting to come, but ultimately, the city has cost Russia a huge amount (remember it's the end of May right now, the offensive started in WINTER), though it has also cost the Ukrainians dearly to hold a city that is of, at best only-slightly-higher-than-negligible strategic value. And that was before it was shelled flat.
Which brings me to!
Pregozin! Pregozin and Wagner took center stage at Bakmut. Where the rest of the Winter Offensive was under the Russian MOD's command, Wagner fell to Putin's favorite caterer-turned-warlord. In recent months, Pregozin has really enjoyed the spotlight, using it to wind up the MOD, throw tantrums for more resources, and make sure Putin knows who his military best boy is. It's in Pregozin's best interest that everyone knows about Bakmut, and it's in his best interest that his pet bloodbath makes international headlines. Russia and it's supporters, and particularly those who support Wagner are all keen to direct attention to what is otherwise a bogged-down attempt to take a city that before the war was completely unknown, unless you had to take a train through eastern Ukraine at some point, and needed to make a transfer. (That's literally it. Train stuff.)
With this in mind, if Wagner WERE to be lying, or like, maybe just taking the inner-city area and calling it a win - at the point where the whole Russian MOD had failed, and he, alone had succeeded, it would certainly make it easier for Putin to decide who gets to keep their job in the inevitable shakeup of staff (this has been a fairly regular thing now)
Another reason that this may not entirely be true is to head off the Ukrainian Spring Offensive. This is probably the least secret military operation in History, and, though the Ukrainians have VERY LITTLE experience in this conflict of actually assaulting enemy positions, there is every chance that they could pull off a repeat of the offensive of last summer. Russia seems to be using almost only the VDV (paratroopers), Wagner and and the Russian Marines to assault, and intel suggests that all of the other front-line units on the ground are poorly trained, poorly equipped, poorly disciplined, in roles they weren't supposed to be taking (a lot of accounts of artillery troops being pressed into rifle platoons etc.) and tend to fold quite quickly when attacked.
Which leaves the assaulting regiments at SUPER high attrition, as eventually they are going to really start to run out of motivated, well-trained, combat-effective combat-tested troops, and can only replace them with green soldiers with no experience. While Ukraine has this same problem, which will only get worse in just the same way, the way they seem to be organizing trainees suggests that, if nothing else, they have a large number of volunteers, not conscripts, who want to be trained as assault troops, who want to be at the front, and that makes quite a big difference.
If Bakmut were genuinely to have fallen before the Spring Offensive (it is late May, after all), then there may be some reconsidering of plans.
However however, there is every chance that Wagner aren't lying. The only reason Ukraine held Bakmut was because their overall strategy - keep Russia out - demanded it. But the city has turned into a huge meatgrinder, and takes important troops away from where they need to be. There are whispers that the West repeatedly urged Ukraine to make a tactical retreat, and beef up the line elsewhere, making better use of the resources they had. If this IS the case, Russia will be left to the spoils - a totally flattened city, and a small handfull of Ukrainian inhabitants who HATE them*.
My last point on this is that we MIGHT be seeing something more sinister. While throughout this post (I'm talking to myself at this point, this is way too long) I've played down the suggestion that the Russians might've taken Bakmut, and if they have, that it means anything at all strategically. However, if they have, it is a bit of a reverse to what we were hearing weeks ago - that the Ukrainians were actively re-taking ground, and had rendered months of Russian advances meaningless in a matter of days. A real problem for Ukraine is their lack of modern combat aircraft. While the Russian Airforce absolutely has had it's problems whole-ass-out this entire conflict, they are still more or less 2 generations in the future from the late-Cold War generation aircraft and defences that Ukraine has, and the dwindling numbers that the Ukrainians can deploy. One of the great indictments of the abject failure* of Russia in this conflict is their failure to secure air superiority (which given they seem to be following the 1940s playbook for how to fight a war, is HUGE). However, if they have pushed Ukraine past its limits, which on paper is absolutely within their capability, then that is that, and significant reversals on the ground must be expected.
*Perun, the Youtuber I mentionned above makes a BRILLIANT point on this. Russia invaded Ukraine looking to 1. annex land, 2. drive Ukraine away from Europe and Nato, and 3. Weaken Nato and US hegemony. Instead they've:
1. ensured that even if they take Ukraine, all it's citizens will hate them. Infrastructure vital to re-coup the costs of a catastrophic war has been HUGELY damaged, and so they will need to re-build, and then defend said new stuff from the Ukraian partizans that inevitable will spring up. Russia won't make any money off this military disaster for GENERATIONS, even if they achieve an absolute victory tomorrow.
2. Ukraine has never been closer to Europe and Nato, and intends to join. Russia invaded, murdered and tortured civillians, Europe and Nato have??? Taken in refugees, provided aid and tried to uphold and protect Ukrainian art and culture, whilst financially punishing Russia's aggression.
3. The best way to make an alliance like Nato meaningful is to make people nervous they might be invaded. The USA that emerged from Iraq and Afghanistan is largely forgotten, as the US has provided INVALUABLE support to Ukraine, and are actually... defending global freedom and democracy? And winning the appropriate plaudits from the international community for doing so.
TLDR; I am really interested in military history, this is an interesting war and work is not busy this afternoon, wow writing this put in the hours ey boys! Thanks for reading.