Military experts say that Russia’s offensive is being fought at five or six points along a front line that stretches about 100 miles from the town of Kreminna in Luhansk to Vuhledar in Donetsk, where Moscow suffered heavy losses in a tank battle in recent weeks.
While Russian forces have not made significant territorial gains in their renewed offensive, they have been tightening the claw around Bakhmut. Last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine vowed that Ukraine would not give up on Bakhmut, calling it “our fortress.” But in recent days, Ukrainian officials have been preparing the public for the possibility of a retreat.
Mick Ryan, a military analyst and retired Australian Army major general who is a fellow at the Lowy Institute, a think tank based in Sydney, wrote on Sunday that Russian forces, despite heavy losses, had “slowly but surely begun to take ground in and around Bakhmut.” He said in a post on Substack that “Russia is strangling (but not yet stopping) the Ukrainian capacity to defend the city.”
That sentiment was echoed by the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based research group. It said that Russian forces “will not likely be able to encircle the city soon,” but that by closing in on the roads that are the vital lifelines of supply for Ukrainian fighters, they could force Kyiv’s forces to abandon their defensive positions and withdraw.
If Russia does eventually capture Bakhmut, it would be the culmination of one the longest-running and bloodiest battles of the war, but questions would remain about Russia’s ability to sustain its offensive and gain further ground in eastern Ukraine.
“The reality is that if the Russians do capture Bakhmut, they are seizing rubble,” Mr. Ryan said. “It is a town with minimal strategic importance, with almost no remaining infrastructure to support an occupying force. That the Russians have invested so much in its capture speaks volumes about their poor strategy in this war.”
Elsewhere on the long front line, Moscow has continued to shell civilian areas in Ukraine over the past few weeks as its offensive has ramped up, often with devastating consequences.
