The Battle for Bakhmut

Mar 9

A Russian airstrike on Bakhmut as seen from space. The town has been bombarded by Russian air and artillery strikes since the middle of 2022.

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A Recipe for War, Analysis of History, Current Events, Military History, Military History, 21st Century Conflicts, Russo-Ukrainian War

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Connections to the Past, Understanding the Past, Repercussions of Events, Current Views, Motives Behind Conflict, Weaponizing History, #Ukraine, #War, #A Recipe for War

March 9, 2023

Kyiv, Kherson, Chernihiv, Sumy, Bucha, Mariupol, Kharkiv, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Lyman, and Vuhledar…

These Ukrainian cities are now well-known to people around the world because of the fierce fighting that raged near or in all of them in the past year. Ukraine has lost some of them. Others it managed to hold, and still others it lost but has since regained. Now, the world’s attention has turned to the unassuming town of 75,000 (in pre-war numbers) known as Bakhmut. Ferocious fighting has raged there for months, and the battle for the city is now reaching an epic climax. The successful defense or taking of the city might herald an end to the stalemate that the war has mostly degenerated into by now. In this post, I’ll discuss the Battle for Bakhmut in detail, and I’ll try to predict how its outcome may affect the Russo-Ukrainian War going forward.

The line begins at the mouth of the mighty Dnieper (or Dnipro) River in Southern Ukraine. After following the course of that river for almost 200 miles, the line swerves to the East. A few miles east of the town of Vuhledar, it turns north, and follows a twisted and complicated path that forms a rough crescent up to the border with Russia. This line, which stretches for hundreds of kilometers through Southern and Eastern Ukraine, is the front line of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Though countless small changes have been made to its course since, it looks largely like it did in November of last year, when Ukraine made the last big change to it during its Kherson Offensive. Since then, heavy fighting has raged all across the line, but few, if any, significant advances have been made. Progress for the armies of Russia and Ukraine has been painfully slow, and it seems that the line will remain fixed in most places in the coming months. However, a small town located right on the Eastern part of the line might prove to be an exception to this rule. This is the now world-famous Bakhmut.

The town is strategically located at a major highway intersection between highways that directly connect northern and southern Ukraine, and indirectly connect Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, with Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city. This intersection makes Bakhmut an important node in Ukraine’s transport network, and the war turned the highways going through the town into vital supply routes for Ukrainian forces fighting in the country’s Donetsk Oblast. Russian forces and their separatist allies had, for the past year, been fighting to cut off access to the road to weaken the Ukrainian military’s position. They’d captured large portions of the main roads in the area, but until recently, powerful Ukrainian resistance kept them from Bakhmut itself. Russian forces finally reached its outskirts in January, and they started making inroads into the city itself in February. However, the Ukrainians made them pay for every inch. Every observer has described Bakhmut as looking more like a World War I-style trench campaign than a modern 21st century offensive sweep. That’s because the Ukrainians heavily fortified Bakhmut before withdrawing to the city, and created a no-man’s land that the Russians found almost impossible to get through. At the same time, Ukrainian forces made heavy use of spy and attack drones, which made short work of numerous Russian armored vehicles. The Russians used drones of their own, but it seems that the Ukrainian ones were more effective throughout the battle. Drones have been used so extensively in Bakhmut that has led some to call it the first true “drone battle” in modern history. Yet the Russians sent so many soldiers to Bakhmut that they successfully got through Ukrainian defenses in the north and east. They almost completely encircled the town by late February, and then entered it. Ukrainian soldiers withdrew from all land east of the Bakhmutka River, which flows through the town. Now, after all those months of fighting, the Ukrainians continue to hold their positions, and Russian advances beyond Bakhmut have been minimal. So what will happen if the battle, which is currently entering an epic climax, comes to an end in the coming weeks?

The encirclement of Bakhmut would be a significant blow to the Ukrainian military, as it would effectively isolate Ukrainian troops in the area and make it difficult to maintain control of the city. If Bakhmut falls to Russian and separatist forces, it would represent a major (albeit probably pyrrhic) Russian victory. The encirclement of the city would also have significant humanitarian consequences, as civilians (most have left, but a few thousand are still in the area of Bakhmut) caught in the crossfire would be at risk of displacement and even death. The battle for Bakhmut is not being fought over trenches and roads; it’s being fought over houses and livelihoods that are being destroyed in the fighting. It may be that the valiant Ukrainian defenders will eventually have to give up the city that they’ve fought so hard for. Yet at this very moment, Ukrainian soldiers are digging into the area around Bakhmut, and they’ll be prepared to defend every inch if Russia tries to advance again. They may lose the valuable highway to Kharkiv, but Ukraine can build a new route to its soldiers if they can hold out long enough. At the same time, we must remembers that, having surprised the world so many times throughout this war, the Ukrainians can pull off one more surprise, and they might just drive the Russians back from Bakhmut. Ultimately, the outcome of the battle remains to be seen. The only thing that we know for sure is that, no matter what happens, the line that stretches from the Dnieper Delta to the Russian border won’t change much. The war will continue to be a stalemate, with no clear outcome in sight.