The siege of Bakhmut continues, huge Russian and Ukrainian losses
Both Ukraine and Russia report high casualties in the Donetsk region as the slow, long and bloody fight for the small town of Bakhmut continues. Ukrainian forces control the western part of the ruined and almost deserted city, while the Russian Wagner group controls most of the eastern area – according to British intelligence sources reported by local media – with the front line on the Bakhmutka river cutting in two the city. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces had suffered more than 1,100 killed in recent days fighting along the Bakhmut section of the front line. Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had killed more than 220 Ukrainian servicemen in the past 24 hours.
According to Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Military Command, 239 Russian soldiers were killed and another 293 injured in the frontline sector around Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast on 12 March. Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War reported, Russia’s defense ministry is “probably seizing the opportunity to deliberately expend both elite and Wagner forces on Bakhmut.”
According to the report, the Kremlin’s alleged strategy of expending Wagner’s forces in the battle for Bakhmut comes after the Wagner company’s founder Prigozhin’s “relentless smear campaign” against the Russian Defense Ministry began in May 2022. A concentrated campaign about the failures of the Russian army during the Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kharkiv. As Prigozhin’s ambition and criticism of regime insiders within the defense ministry alarmed Putin, Wagner is unlikely to return to the level of support he received in spring 2022.
Instead, Wagner’s forces will likely be used “as a scapegoat for the costly push on Bakhmut once the offensive culminates,” the Washington think tank assessment reads. The report comes right at the same time as Wagner’s attempts to recruit more members by opening new recruiting centers in 42 Russian cities.