Image is of Russian mercenary Frodonov Bagginsky, standing in the ruins of Bakhmut after the battle concluded.
After nearly a year of intense fighting for the town of Bakhmut, Russian forces have finally reached full control.
While tens of thousands of lives have ended in the area in and around Bakhmut, perhaps almost as interesting as the battle itself has been the war of narratives over it. The state propagandists in the West have spent a lot of effort muddying the waters about the battle for the city, to the extent that the two sides now live in effectively separate realities.
If you are pro-Ukraine, the reality you observe is that this was an excellent maneuver by the Ukrainians - as the Russians send in their troops in human wave attacks armed only with shovels, you have achieved a 1:7 casualty ratio in your favor. You have fundamentally weakened the Russian army because, for some inscrutable reason, they have decided to attack one of the strongest parts of your front line - this reveals the inherent stupidity of the Ruskies. Let them have the city for all you care - it has zero importance and you will soon recapture it. You are, in fact, one step closer to winning the war - far from losing it.
If you are pro-Russian, the reality you observe is that this was an excellent maneuver by the Russians. By utilizing your massive artillery advantage over the enemy side, sometimes achieving over ten times the number of shells fired on any given day, you can easily attrit enemy forces and you have done so, achieving a 1:7 casualty ratio in your favor. As Bakhmut is a central city in the fortification line, Ukraine has no choice but to defend it with all their strength, which allowed you to create a cauldron which has been the death of tens of thousands of troops, at the expense of only mercenaries. The logistical links that capturing the city has both created for you and severed for the enemy will make future campaigns easier, and you are now capable of advancing into territory that hasn't spent the last eight years being fortified by all NATO has to offer. You are, in fact, one step closer to winning the war - far from losing it.
While I would love to be a very smart enlightened centrist and go "Well, both sides have a point here..." all evidence I can discern points to the Russian position and away from the Ukrainian one. When Zelensky went to the US and spoke before Congress earlier this year, he said:
To ensure Bakhmut is not just a stronghold that holds back the Russian Army, but for the Russian Army to completely pull out, more cannons and shells are needed. If so, just like the Battle of Saratoga, the fight for Bakhmut will change the trajectory of our war for independence and for freedom.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
This week's third update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Another big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia's army.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
I've seen three stances on it:
The general Western stance (best exemplified by Reddit) is that Bakhmut has little strategic significance - depending on your viewpoint, either it was a bad move for Ukraine to commit so many of its forces to the city when they could have used them in the counteroffensive, or, if you're totally delusional, it was a brilliant move by Ukraine as they've lost almost no people in exchange for gunning down hordes of Russian orcs and the only reason they had to move out of Bakhmut is because they ran out of bullets.
The Ukrainian stance (best exemplified by Zelensky and his speech to Congress, of which I included an excerpt in the preamble) is that Bakhmut is indeed very important, but usually couched in jingoistic language like "It's important because it'll be how we defeat Russia! Battle of Saratoga 2.0! Stalingrad, but we're the Soviets, but we're good instead of bad!" and not through more sober analysis about fortifications and such.
The Russian stance (best exemplified, in English at least, by the constellation of war bloggers like Big Serge and Mercouris and Berletic, etc) is that Bakhmut is very important because of the reasons I gave in the preamble, though I do also think that there's been a tendency to overstate its importance, with some like Mercouris even saying effectively "Once the city is taken, there's not much standing between Russia and the Dniper." I see no reason why Russia will give up its attrition strategy when it's been effective, if rather unimpressive in terms of really visible results so far, and instead switch to a more offensive model perhaps even with big arrows. They might do it, of course - maybe the Russian command has agreed that Bakhmut's capture will be the event that switches their strategies - but I can't immediately see why. As it stands, I feel like we won't be talking about the Battle of Kramatorsk/Slavyansk for a while, let alone about Russian forces reaching the Dniper.
IF Russia were to do a "big arrows" approach as you suggest, my take is that a big arrow to Izyum would cut off Kramatorsk/Slavyansk from an extremely important supply line and secure the entire of eastern Donetsk. A second big arrow from the south while a push from the east occurs would then be effective.
This however depends on the landmine situation, issues with bridging the city river, and how well they can maintain their supply line running north to Izyum past the east of Slavyansk. Some mention of towns to the east was occuring in the last thread but I looked and see very little worth defending there.
I think it's more likely that they'll just continue the attrition approach. It is working and carries less risk while also being very boring for global onlookers.
idk i think putin should draw some big arrows and magically make them work so i can own redditors