Before we begin, a few words about the head of PMC Wagner, Evgeni Prigozhin.
This character maybe pops up much more often than he deserves, but today, the buzz is justified.
Recently, Prigozhin posted a videotaped rant where he, surrounded by his mercenaries’ corpses,
cusses the Defense Minister and the Chief of the General Staff out.
He demands ammo supplies for his military company.
Should they fail to do so, the Ukrainian army’s counteroffensive will obliterate the whole unit.
The rear isn’t protected, the supply chain is compromised, and everything’s messed up.
Apparently, the first video didn’t achieve the desired effect, so today, he’s released the second one.
Prigozhin turned to direct threats.
He rather receives the ammo by May 10 or bails from Bakhmut and retreats to the rear to avoid worthless casualties.
The way Prigozhin has been acting over the past month, the prison lingo he uses, and the source
of his reinforcements make me want to call his state a “con whine.”
For the regular Russian army, Prigozhin and his PMC is an enemy akin to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
It mainly boils down to the competition for the resources, but there’s one more angle to it.
The army is a hierarchical organization that forces people to wear uniforms so it’s obvious from a mile away
who calls the shots.
It’s crucial for any army to have it figured out, who’s issuing orders and who obeys them.
Who allocates the resources and who makes due with what they’ve got.
And here’s a freelancer who’s appointed himself a general and now barks out orders to real generals.
Now they have to share their weapons, equipment, ammo, intel, and logistics infrastructure with him
while jeopardizing their own units.
The generals watch the freelancer capitalizing on their work and blaming them for his failures.
The very existence of such a character must make their blood boil.
And when this freelancer slanders them every other day, the top brass will do everything in their power,
maybe even play along with the enemy, to get rid of him.
Who’s exactly Gerasimov, head of the General Staff? He had his first army division under command back in 1993.
Over 30 years, he’s grown accustomed to people slouching, paling, trembling, and fainting in his presence.
And now some schmuck shows up and hits out at him?
Obviously such a character has to be dealt with, ideally six feet under alongside his cronies.
And it isn’t only about generals’ personal ambition or wounded pride.
The bigger issue is that’s not the way to wage war, at least not in centralized states that’ve advanced past feudalism.
A modern army simply can’t operate without unity of command and consist of various groups
of interest that pursue their own goals without any cooperation.
However you look at it, Prigozhin is a pain in the army’s neck. His rejection has always been a matter of time.
Apparently, he enjoyed a blank check being Putin’s favorite. Generals had to keep swallowing the pill.
But his Wild West days are over at least since January.
All he has left is to whine in public and corrupt the Russian army in secret,
furtively purchasing equipment, ammo, and even personnel.
It’s crystal clear Prigozhin has nowhere to turn anymore.
It’s uncertain if the resignation of General Mizintsev, the Russian army’s chief of supplies,
has anything to do with Prigozhin losing his last supply channels.
What’s certain is that Prigozhin doesn’t whine anymore. He’s resorted to blackmailing.
“If you, frigging Shoigu and Gerasimov (what follows are unquotable F-bombs).
Unless you’re giving me what I want, my troops will leave Bakhmut on May 10.” How does it translate into Russian?
If the generals ignore Prigozhin, he’ll take away the only thing that can pass as a relative success of the offensive campaign,
the capture of a bulk of Bakhmut’s ruins.
Prigozhin rather gets all he wants or stages another collapse of the front. Another bitter defeat.
A gift of Bakhmut to the AFU will practically bring about the counteroffensive.
You shouldn't be fighting a pointless war against the neighbor at all. But that's what we're dealing with.
Today, let’s discuss the battle of Bakhmut in detail. The way it began, what happened recently, and why it’s that important.
NEW PHASE
Over the past 6 months, the frontline hasn’t seen a significant change. It could’ve seemed like nothing was happening.
However, something fundamental came about. The new phase of the war kicked off.
The momentum has now strategically swung toward Kyiv. After the recent drone attack on the Kremlin, it’s crystal clear not only
to military experts and analysts. It’s obvious for any observer.
What do we mean by saying Ukraine has the momentum?
We mean that the situation on the ground has turned the way that allows Ukraine to pick a time and a place for its offensive.
The Russian army has nothing to do but wait for it. It can’t be prevented. The top brass has no means to hold it back.
There’s no alien technology that’d destroy the bridges to stop Leopard battle tanks from approaching the battlefield.
There are no gaps in the Ukrainian air defense that’d allow for the Russian bombers to target ammunition
and fuel storage facilities.
There are no cruise missiles left to hit military bases and camps.
The Russian generals can’t help but have to prepare for the fight, dig trenches,
muster up heaps of artillery, and seek ammo for it.
Now that the Ukrainian counteroffensive hasn’t kicked off yet,
gaining the momentum by Ukraine is the biggest news of the entire 15 months of the war.
However, a few things happened that turned the tide of the war.
First, in October, Russia launched a large-scale missile assault on Ukraine.
The Russian generals intended to force Ukraine to surrender by destroying the nation’s energy infrastructure.
Many Ukrainian cities faced the prospect of lacking electricity, water, and central heating during the harsh winter months.
It could’ve resulted not only in the economic collapse, but in Europe’s biggest humanitarian disaster since WW2.
Such missile warfare had become a formidable challenge for the Ukrainian air defense and energy experts.
A large European country had to resort to scheduled and emergency shutdowns.
Twice the entire nation faced a total blackout. People lived on stored food and water supplies.
Hospitals switched to generators donated from all over Europe.
The Ukrainian air defense learned to fend off these attacks and grew even stronger.
The nation restored its energy infrastructure and resumed electricity exports to the E.U.
The Ukrainians didn’t even think about pushing their government to pacify Putin and stop the missile attacks.
On the contrary, it boosted their determination to keep fighting and kick the invaders out.
Meanwhile, the Russian top brass has practically run out of missiles in these worthless attacks.
Only intercontinental ballistic missiles are left, the ones the establishment threaten to reach London and Washington with.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, a new Russian offensive in the Donbas has been taking place
over the past 6 months. It resulted in the Ukrainian defensive operation at Bakhmut.
That’s what happened.
The Ukrainian forces lost their edge after the successful counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region and at Kherson.
The Russian army, reinforced with 300,000-odd draftees, was ready to launch a new assault.
Remember what they told us back then?
The recruits were to go through training and unit cohesion drills, and resume the attack on Kyiv from Belarus
after the New Year.
They were also to take part in the assault on Zaporizhzhia and the Donbas.
It helped Kyiv negotiate more military aid from the West. Bradley IFVs, German Leopard
and British Challenger battle tanks, and French AMX-10 AFVs headed to Ukraine to shore up its cause.
While Kyiv was accumulating the new equipment, intercepting missiles, and shooting down drones,
Russia launched a large-scale offensive.
The original goal was to push the Ukrainian forces out of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
That would allow Putin to brag about at least something. “Kyiv in three days, you say? Never mind, take a gander.
We’ve completely liberated the LPR and DPR! The special operation has been successful, after all!”
The truth is, the Ukrainian military analysts didn’t believe the enemy would occupy the whole region.
The front was simply too wide. It stretched from Kupyansk to Vuhledar.
In the Donbas, the Ukrainian army set up defensive lines around fairly large cities of Avdiivka,
Bakhmut, Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, and Druzhkivka.
Ukrainian military experts were afraid of wasting available resources during the second battle of the Donbas,
and resorting to use the equipment and ammo reserved for the future operations.
Such an outcome would’ve been much more gruesome for Ukraine than losing Avdiivka or Bakhmut.
It would’ve deprived the AFU of their offensive potential.
That would’ve halted any plans of liberating their territories for months.
If the Russian command managed to force Ukraine to waste its resources in the Donbas, the Russian troops
would have an advantage even without any territorial grabs. Putin would’ve gotten a bargaining chip at negotiations.
It’d be akin to a game of chess when any side could win despite a formal deuce.
The Russian General Staff had to push the AFU out of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The AFU command was tasked with defending and grinding off the Russian offensive potential.
They had to do it while a bulk of the troops were training at the European bootcamps.
They had to hold key defense areas, save personnel, and build up resources for future battles.
They also intensified sabotage operations that disabled the enemy’s military infrastructure.
At the same time, drones gave hard time to what’s left of the Russian air defense.
SECOND BATTLE FOR THE DONBAS
The second battle for the Donbas kicked off after the New Year,
when heavy armored vehicles could traverse the frozen ground.
The Russian offensive drew a blank in almost every direction.
Its effectiveness could be measured by the battle for Vuhledar, a tiny mining town at the southern edge of the Russian assault.
At first, the Russian forces attempted to punch their way through to the town from Pavlivka.
It’s a small village in the lowlands south of Vuhledar, separated from the town by the Kashlahach river.
Such a move didn’t catch the AFU off guard.
From the fortified positions beyond the river, they’d been shooting the approaching Russian infantry
since October/November.
Russian battle tanks, APCs, and IFVs followed suit.
It took the Russian top brass heavy casualties in armored vehicles to suss out that attacking fortified positions
from a lowland and over the river wasn’t the brightest idea.
The second attack on Vuhledar came from a neighboring village of Mykilske.
Before long, it turned out the Ukrainian artillery was capable of striking at armored vehicles from far away.
Those that managed to scurry away blew up in minefields around the town.
The Russian army lost 100-odd armored units, causing no damage to the AFU.
The other parts of the front saw a similar scenario unfold.
The city of Bakhmut was the exception. It became the focal point of the battle for the Donbas.
The city didn’t have any strategic value to begin with, but it gained it.
It’s a smaller city that blocks the way to other cities like Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Kostyantynivka.
If it wasn’t for Bakhmut, protracted devastating battles would take place in one of those places.
But after the retreat from Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, the AFU entrenched themselves near Bakhmut and Soledar.
That was the direction of PMC Wagner’s attack.
These two factors resulted in the Battle of Bakhmut that’s been going on for 278 days.
The frontline approached Bakhmut at a slow pace at first. Battles for the surrounding villages
and the city of Soledar took place.
It could have been a spot to fortify and hold back the advancing enemy.
PMC Wagner troops, however, were at the top of their game.
They were reinforced by the mobilized convicts that were squandered as cannon fodder.
They also enjoyed a steady supply of ammo, which was more than any other Russian unit in the Donbas could ask for.
That allowed them to inch forward leaving piles of their own corpses behind.
It became progressively harder for the AFU to defend Bakhmut.
PMC Wagner had a hard time, too. They couldn’t keep up a stable advance all along the front.
They resorted to attack haphazardly. It turned out their commanders couldn’t launch a coordinated attack.
For instance, when they reached Bakhmut from the south, they couldn’t budge an inch due to the lack of resources.
They could only advance when the ravaged city of Soledar to the north surrendered.
Bakhmut has become a tragic reenactment of the Battle of Verdun, the bloodiest battle of WW1.
It lasted 9 months and 27 days. The Battle of Bakhmut fell only 22 days short.
Sustaining heavy casualties, the AFU managed to hold the flanks and avoid encirclement in Bakhmut.
However hard they tried, Wagner troops couldn’t shut down the Ukrainian supply route.
To capture Bakhmut, the Russian troops had to fight exhausting bloody battles in urban areas.
It’s the definition of hell for an attacking army.
Battle tanks are vulnerable to the enemy that can take cover in any building.
The infantry is the only way to advance, but even so, every crossroad, every building,
or even floor can be a stage for protracted skirmishes.
Sooner or later, artillery support will be required to keep up the offensive.
Lots of shells will have to be used, rendering the city razed.
For any building, intact or ruined, can be used as fortification by the enemy.
You fight over a shed for weeks, wasting copious amounts of ammo and fuel reserved for further advance.
Such battles call for complicated supply chains: ammo depots, repair facilities, field hospitals — you name it.
And such infrastructure is vulnerable to artillery fire. Every blown-up depot stalls the offensive even further.
FOCAL POINT
In a nutshell, Bakhmut has become the focal point of the war simply because its dense urban development allowed
the AFU to destroy more enemy manpower than to lose their own. That bloody exchange was the point of the battle.
If the AFU had left the city and retreated to new positions, the same would’ve happened in Kostyantynivka,
Sloviansk, or Kramatorsk, where still thousands of civilians are present and businesses are active.
Western military experts had considered for long time that holding Bakhmut costed too many lives.
But on day 279 of the Battle of Bakhmut and day 436 of the Russian invasion, while the AFU are still holding Bakhmut,
Ukraine’s Western allies changed their tone.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley
admit Bakhmut has become the point where Ukraine has succeeded to grind off the Russian offensive potential.
Recently, the Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby stated that over the 5 months of carnage,
the Russian army had lost 100,000-odd killed and wounded.
That’s at least a half of the group that invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year.
If this estimate is anything to go by, such losses will definitely affect the state of the Russian troops.
In fact, it’s already happening.
At the beginning of the invasion, who could’ve thought that the head of PMC Wagner, Prigozhin,
the poster child of Russia’s most “successful” unit, would publicly issue ultimatums to the General Staff?
Either they immediately find ammo for him, or he withdraws his thugs from the front.
Who could’ve thought that his casualty reports would match those issued by the General Staff of Ukraine?
Not to mention Prigozhin’s announcement of his withdrawal from Bakhmut on May 10.
Western generals have agreed that the Russian troops in Ukraine are long past their combat-readiness prime.
We can clearly see how disorganized and messy the Russian army is.
It doesn’t take a military genius to realize it. Common sense will do.
Over the 15 months of war, the Russian establishment and propaganda have come a long way from
“seize Kyiv in three days” to “Putin is fine after the attack on the Kremlin.”
From the imaginary victory parade in central Kyiv to routine drone attacks on Russian territory.
We now live in the world where Prigozhin, the head of the most combat-ready formations in Russia,
reports colossal losses as openly as he cusses the generals out.
It’s obvious that the Russian Armed Forces are approaching its biggest challenge unprepared.
Especially now, when burning depots, train crashes, explosions at oil storage facilities,
and incidents at top-secret research centers happen on a daily basis.
This is a story of a country that considered fighting its neighbor a great idea. A state that literally has no army.
A state that doesn’t have what it takes to be a state: the monopoly on violence and unity of command in the army.
It does have a bunch of armed people, but they aren’t managed by orders and plans, but by deception,
blackmail, brainwashing, pilfery, and corruption.
The commander-in-chief is the one who managed to dupe, bamboozle, and rob his competitors.
It seems like the situation is about to change dramatically.
See you tomorrow!