Russia may have effectively captured Bakhmut’s token prize, but in many ways the battle for the city might just be beginning.
Moscow declared a triumphant victory at Bakhmut over the weekend, its first in nearly a year, with state media hailing its «liberation» and President Vladimir Putin promising «state rewards» to those who «distinguished» in the longest battle. and bloody war.
However, Putin’s troops, exhausted and depleted by the kind of fighting not seen in Europe since World War II, may find it difficult to push further into the eastern Donbas region, while Kiev’s armed forces will try to take advantage of recent advances by trying to bypass them, according to Ukrainian officials and Western military analysts.
‘Mission accomplished’?
Russian state media headlines declared on Monday that Bakhmut was already being cleared after the country’s defense ministry and mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday that forces led by Wagner fighters had taken full control. of the battered city.
Prigozhin posted footage of his fighters raising flags over partially destroyed buildings in the city, which has been left in ruins by months of conflict that has seen both sides suffer heavy losses.
A news anchor on Russia’s Channel One called the capture of the city «an event of historic proportions» and «mission accomplished,» at the top of a Sunday afternoon newscast, as Putin congratulated Wagner’s units and Russia’s regular army, despite weeks of bitter disputes between Prigozhin and Russia’s military high command.
But the celebrations were dismissed in kyiv, where officials insisted the city was not fully under Russian control and the battle was far from over.
“Despite the fact that we now control a small part of Bakhmut, the importance of its defense does not lose relevance,” the commander of the ground forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Sunday. «We are still advancing on the flanks in the suburbs of Bakhmut and, in fact, we are close to capturing the city in a tactical encirclement,» he added.
Serhii Cherevaty, spokesman for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, also said Sunday night that Ukrainian forces maintain control of «a number of buildings and fortifications in the southwestern part of the city.»
NBC News was unable to verify the claims by either side about the situation on the ground.
Mixed messages about who controls the city may indicate that a number of things are happening simultaneously and that the battle for the city may not be over but entering a new phase, said Neil Melvin, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, a London-based think tank.
Wagner’s forces concentrated in the central area of the city and relinquished flank control to reinforced Russian regular army troops, Melvin told NBC News, giving the mercenary fighters enough strength to seize the entire central area. from the city.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army appears to have withdrawn from its final positions in the center and concentrated on the city’s northern and southern flanks, where it has begun pushing back Russian troops in the last week or so.
It now appears to be aiming to encircle the city and thereby isolate and then destroy Wagner’s forces in the center, Melvin added.
“We keep moving forward [on the flanks]”, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on Ukrainian television on Monday. “The intensity is reduced a little bit, but we continue to make progress.”