Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, made a private visit to troops elsewhere in the Donbas region, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday. He inspected a frontline command post south of Donetsk and was updated on “the current situation and the actions of the army”, according to the ministry, which released a video showing him being awarded the medal.
Analysts say that, although Ukraine’s grip appears to be slipping, any side can double down and dump troops and weapons to prolong the battle, but only at the risk of attrition. their army strength for other skirmishes.
The withdrawal of Ukraine’s troops offers hope of later success – in a long-anticipated counter-offensive that will use a new arsenal of Western heavy weapons, including the German Leopard II tank. Analysts say troops in Bakhmut could be redirected to that attack.
“There can be a trade-off between providing the necessary resources to keep it up,” said Rob Lee, a military analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Philadelphia-based think Bakhmut and exhausted the forces needed for the spring offensive.
Much is going on in the battle for access roads. Oleh Kadanov, a Ukrainian volunteer supporting the army, was driving on the road from Chasiv Yar to Bakhmut on Tuesday. “There aren’t too many craters,” he said in an interview. At the time, he said, the road was not hit directly by tanks or machine guns.
The city itself was “scary,” he said. Bombed by Russian artillery from three sides and surrounded by street fighting, “nowhere is safe” once inside.
For Russia, capturing Bakhmut opens these roads to the west – but not by much. Ukraine has many layers of defense in the Donbas region, sometimes seen in the long trenches that cut through the fields to the rear of the current front line. So if Russia finally claims Bakhmut, the war of attrition could simply shift a few miles to the west.
Cassandra Vinograd contribution report.
