
Vladimir Putin and his military commanders have chosen to throw relatively untrained recruits from Russia’s prisons and hinterlands toward the front line of the war in Ukraine in what has become a human meat grinder. Is their plan working? James S. Robbins analyzes the results in The American Spectator, writing:
According to reportsĀ from the front lines in Bakhmut, Russia is losing a significant number of troops to take the strategically insignificant Ukrainian city. Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin says everything is going according to plan. Unfortunately, he may be right.
Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk Oblast, has been under attack since August, and Russia has slowly advanced as Ukrainian troops have doggedly contested every foot of ground. The Kremlin has been characteristically quiet about casualties, but an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr ZelenskyĀ estimatesĀ that Russia may have lost up to 20,000 troops in the axis between Bakhmut and nearby Russian-occupied Soledar. This is a heavy price to pay for a city that has no significant strategic value.
Nevertheless, on Sunday PutinĀ said: āThe dynamics are positive. Everything is developing within the plan of the Defense Ministry and the General Staff. And I hope that our fighters will please us more than once again with the results of their combat work.ā
One could dismiss this statement as the usual totalitarian messaging, where everything is always positive, the regime is always right, and the supreme leader is working from an inscrutable plan that mere mortals have no hope of understanding.Ā Trust us, comrades,Ā Putin is saying.Ā Forget those body bags; final victory is assured.
But in some respects, Putin is right. Despite thousands of lost lives, Russia still holds significant amounts of Ukrainian territory. Occupation forces are busy forciblyĀ integratingĀ the subject populations into Moscowās alternative reality. And at the front lines, Russia seems to be engaging in a calculated effort to weaken Ukraine through attrition warfare.
The siege of Bakhmut is like a scaled-down version of the 1916Ā Battle of Verdun. In that battleĀ āĀ the longest of World War I at 11 monthsĀ āĀ German strategists calculated that the French would commit any troops necessary to hold the symbolically important city. By seizing key fortifications on the edge of the town, the Germans invited the French to mount counterattacks that would devastate their forces while the Kaiserās troops enjoyed the relative advantage of the defense.
Ultimately, Verdun did not work out to Germanyās advantage. Both sides suffered over 350,000 casualtiesĀ āĀ slightly more on the French side, but nothing like the lopsided casualty count that Chief of the German General Staff General Erich von Falkenhayn had expected. The battle cost him his job.
Russian military leadership had a shakeupĀ last week as well. Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov took command from Sergey Surovikin, who had commanded since October and now will act as Gerasimovās deputy. But, unlike Verdun, this may not signal a change in Russiaās approach to the war.
The numbers weigh in Moscowās favor. AmericanĀ estimatesĀ indicate that each side has likely suffered equal casualties. But even if Kyiv is doing somewhat better at minimizing losses, Russia has a deeper mobilization base withĀ three timesĀ the population of Ukraine. And Putin is more than happy toĀ emptyĀ his prisons,Ā payĀ for Wagner Group mercenaries,Ā enforceĀ harsh conscription, and generally treat his troops as cannon fodder. Putin does not seem to mind bleeding Russia if it also means bleeding Ukraine.
This dynamic is evident in Bakhmut. āWhen we kill five out of 10 of their soldiers at once, they are replenished again to 10 over the course of several hours,āĀ saidĀ Ukrainian deputy battalion commander Andriy Kryshchenko. Russian troops can maintain a combat tempo that the Ukrainians canāt match.
Read more here.
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