NEW: #Wagner financier Yevgeny #Prigozhin’s star has begun to set after months of apparent rise following his failure to make good on promises of capturing #Bakhmut with his own forces. isw.pub/UkrWar012223
2/ Tonight's abbreviated report focuses on the #Kremlin’s recent marginalization of the #Wagner Group following the culmination of the drive on #Bakhmut and its return to reliance on conventional frontline forces and on the regular Ministry of Defense/General Staff apparatus.
3/ The report also analyzes the changing relationship between Russian President Vladimir #Putin and Wagner financier Yevgeny #Prigozhin and its implications. isw.pub/UkrWar012223
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The #Wagner Group’s outsized reliance on recruitment from penal colonies appears to be having increasing ramifications on Wagner’s combat capability. isw.pub/UkrWar012323
2/ Head of the independent Russian human rights organization “Rus Sidyashchaya” (Russia Behind Bars) claimed that out of the assessed 50K prisoners that Wagner has recruited, only 10K are fighting on frontlines in #Ukraine due to high casualty, surrender, and desertion rates.
3/ ISW cannot independently confirm these figures, but they are very plausible considering Wagner’s model of using convicts as cannon fodder in highly attritional offensive operations.
Russian forces continued ground attacks around #Bakhmut and on the western outskirts of Donetsk City. isw.pub/UkrWar012323
2/ Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner Group forces are operating southwest of Bakhmut in the Klishchiivka area in order to push towards Ivanivsk and cut the Ukrainian T0504 Kostyantynivka-Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut ground line of communication (GLOC).
3/ The Ukrainian State Border Guards Service reiterated that Ukrainian forces control the majority of Bakhmut itself and are conducting successful counterattacks to regain lost positions in the area.
Putin likely turned to Prigozhin & Prigozhin’s reported ally, Army Gen. Sergey Surovikin, to continue efforts to gain ground and break the will of #Ukraine and its Western backers to continue the war after the conventional military had culminated & suffered disastrous setbacks.🧵
2/ The Russian MoD and General Staff, headed by Sergey Shoigu and Army General Valeriy Gerasimov respectively, had turned their attention to mobilizing Russian reservists and conscripts and setting conditions for improved performance by the conventional Russian military...
...but they had little hope of achieving anything decisive in the Fall and early Winter of 2022.
Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks around #Bakhmut and west of #Donetsk City. Russian forces are likely making incremental gains around Bakhmut. isw.pub/UkrWar012123
2/ Russian forces continued limited attacks to regain lost positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line. isw.pub/UkrWar012123
3/ Russian forces conducted a small ground reconnaissance into #Ukraine's northeastern Sumy Oblast on January 20.
Ukrainian forces have previously employed a similar gradual attrition model to compel Russian operations in certain areas to culminate after months of suffering high personnel and equipment losses in pursuit of marginal tactical gains.🧵isw.pub/UkrWar012123
2/ Russian troops spent months attempting to grind through effective Ukrainian defenses in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in the early summer of 2022 and captured Lysychansk only after a controlled Ukrainian withdrawal from the area.
3/ The capture of Lysychansk and the Luhansk Oblast administrative border, however, quickly proved to be operationally insignificant for Russian forces.
While the costs associated with Ukraine’s defense of Bakhmut are significant & likely include opportunity costs related to potential Ukrainian counter-offensive operations elsewhere, Ukraine would also have paid a significant price for allowing Russian troops to take it easily.🧵
2/ #Bakhmut itself is not operationally or strategically significant but had Russian troops taken it relatively rapidly and cheaply they could have hoped to expand operations in ways that could have forced #Ukraine to construct hasty defensive positions in less favorable terrain.
3/ One must also not dismiss the seemingly “political” calculus of committing to the defense of #Bakhmut lightly—Russian forces occupy over 100K sq km of Ukrainian territory including multiple Ukrainian cities & are inflicting atrocities on Ukrainian civilians in occupied areas.