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For eight months, Russia has been attempting to press toward Bakhmut from every direction. This is
the location for which the Wagner mercenary group has made repeat visits to Russian prisons, recruiting people to die fighting to obtain the same blocks over and over. It’s also the location where the gain and losses have been measured in such ridiculously small increments that observers have become intimately familiar with what is on each block. The hardware store. The cement factory. Or, to be more honest, they’ve become familiar with what shows up when you look at the map on Google—because all those businesses are now rubble.
In the effort to take Bakhmut, Russia has sometimes blanketed the streets east of the city with bodies. An October advance that seemed to show Russia finally reaching the outer blocks of Bakhmut proper was followed by a swift pushback from Ukraine that drove Wagner out of the town and back to positions it held in August. Then Russia went right back to attacking again.
However, it’s possible that in the last few days, the static situation may have changed.
Really, the situation at Bakhmut has been
so static that many analysts have voiced suspicions that Ukraine wants it this way. Perhaps pinning down Wagner Group in futile efforts to capture this one well-fortified area is designed to simply chew through Russian forces and keep some of their most experienced commanders stuck playing supervisor to increasingly worthless troops hurled through a World War I-style no man’s land to their inevitable deaths.