Thread by @KatStepanenko

Why did Russians fight so relentlessly for Bakhmut since May 2022?

Sharing my latest assessment with @TheStudyofWar on how the Russian offensive on Bakhmut lost its limited operational significance throughout the year.🧵

https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1661367569121460227

Major thanks to @georgewbarros for the accompanying maps and gifs that best illustrate this overly-ambitious Russian operational effort.

The seizure of Bakhmut was originally intended to facilitate Russian offensives to encircle large Ukrainian forces in the east and specifically to take the large and fortified city of Slovyansk from multiple directions.

Bakhmut was not a primary Russian objective during the early phases of the war, and the Russian military command aimed to secure Donetsk Oblast’s administrative borders by seizing major Ukrainian strongholds such as Slovyansk and Kramatorsk directly.

The Ukrainian liberation of most of Kharkiv Oblast in September 2022 ended the immediate Russian threats to Slovyansk and, secondarily, Kramatorsk, whereupon Bakhmut became the main operational and political objective for the Kremlin.

Bakhmut fit into the planned Russian winter offensive as one of several lines of advance that were supposed to end by securing the Luhansk and Donetsk oblast boundaries, but all the other attempted advances failed.

The failure of the Donbas winter offensive once again deprived the Battle for Bakhmut of hypothetical operational significance by March-April 2023.

Moscow stubbornly clung to its efforts to seize Bakhmut regardless of the operational context and ultimately took the destroyed city at a hideous cost in manpower and materiel, then ceding the initiative in the Bakhmut area to Ukraine.

So what is happening now and what conclusions can we draw from the Russian stubborn drive on Bakhmut?

The battle marks the first claimed Russian victory over a large city since the capture of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in the summer of 2022 - but it is not over just yet.

Ukrainian forces regained the initiative and are counterattacking Bakhmut’s flanks north and south of the city.

https://twitter.com/KatStepanenko/status/1660665448025796608

The decision to allow the battle to end or force it into a new phase now lies with Kyiv. Ukraine thus now has the initiative at every level of war across almost the entire front.

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin has likely signaled the culmination of Wagner forces in declaring victory in Bakhmut on May 20 and announcing Wagner’s withdrawal from the city and plans to reconstitute on May 25, despite subsequent denials.

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1659977239893508096

Prigozhin’s announced intention to withdraw his forces from the frontlines and give them two months to reconstitute likely indicates that Prigozhin assesses that his forces have been exhausted in combat, his denials notwithstanding.

Prigozhin had also been setting information conditions for months signaling that Wagner would not be able to continue to advance after capturing Bakhmut while observing that the Russian seizure of all of Donetsk Oblast will require years of combat.

https://twitter.com/KatStepanenko/status/1624809453051576324

We assessed on March 5 that “the Russian offensive in Bakhmut will likely culminate whether Russian forces capture the city or not, and the Russian military will struggle to maintain any subsequent offensive operations for some months.” understandingwar.org/backgrounder/r…

The Wagner Group’s announced two-month reconstitution period could have Wagner forces sitting out key parts of the Ukrainian counteroffensive depending on when and how it begins.

➡️The Battle of Bakhmut exposed several key flaws in the Russian planning and conduct of operational maneuver.

The Russian military command continued to pursue a relentless assault on Bakhmut after the city lost its original operational significance and failed to adjust its military objectives appropriately.

The Kremlin, evidently, chased after any potential victory to generate informational effects & allowed Prigozhin to expend a large amount of Russian ammunition & thousands of prisoner recruits & then more professional forces to maintain a battle of no operational significance.

Prigozhin also continued this battle to gain desired political standing in Russia – likely without the intent to pursue the original goal of conducting a wider encirclement of Donbas.

https://twitter.com/KatStepanenko/status/1635359697032327169

The Kremlin’s fixation with Bakhmut indicates that Russia has not learned lessons from the first phases of the war. The Russian military command continues to overestimate Russian military capabilities & has not mastered time and space relationships in this war.

The Russian military command also continues to pursue ill-informed political objectives at the expense of Russian personnel and resources.