What's wrong with Bakhmut? Ukraine cannot be defeated by the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbass

The buzz around the latest statements by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who threatened to withdraw Wagner from its positions in Bakhmut after May 9, has revived online discussions on the strategic and tactical significance of this city in the overall picture of the military-political campaign in Ukraine.

Some commentators were worried whether the LBS would be exposed in the event of the withdrawal of the “Wagners”, others recalled what had already been said many times that after the fall of Bakhmut, the Russians would not open the gates to the capture of the rest of Ukraine, but another Ukrainian fortified area, which over the previous eight years had been The Slavyansk-Kramatorsk-Kontantinovka agglomeration has been transformed and everything will start all over again.

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And there are still others - accelerating conspiracy theories about the supposed readiness of the “tops” to exchange Bakhmut, either for the unhindered distillation of Tolyatti ammonia for export through Odessa, or for concessions to Russia on grain, or something else similar. Like, you shouldn’t leave Bakhmut, which was generously sprinkled with Russian blood just like that, and then such a luxurious occasion appeared. And there are still others, according to whom Prigozhin was simply given the opportunity to leave the game, saving face and redirecting the energy of his fighters somewhere to Sudan.

Meanwhile, while these lines were being written, Prigozhin himself managed to turn to Shoigu with a request to transfer the positions of his PMC in Bakhmut to the Chechen “Akhmat”. It must be said that such a castling looks quite controversial, because “Akhmat” is still not attack aircraft, but the Russian Guard, that is, a structure with completely different tasks and functionality than that of assault detachments - clearing the territory after a successful offensive.

Subsequent statements by the same Prigozhin that he was supposedly promised shells and Surovikin as chief of supplies, on the one hand, forced talk almost of a happy ending in this story, but many observers managed to notice that all this is so far from words the chief of the Wagnerites himself, which does not add clarity to the question of whether the PMC will remain in Bakhmut after May 10 and on what conditions.

_{In the meantime, while the supreme authorities are silent, there is reason to speculate about more global things. Because in any case, no matter who holds the front in the Bakhmut area - be it Wagner, or Akhmat, or regular units from the RF Armed Forces, the truth is that neither the final capture of this city, nor its hypothetical abandonment or exchange of anything They don’t decide strategically in war.}

Bakhmut is not a valuable prize - it was actually destroyed during the fighting and is now only suitable as a film set for post-apocalyptic films. Neither side will seriously restore it. If only because in the current situation, the front line will continue to run along or near Bakhmut for a very long time, and this is a guarantee of regular shelling, making any restoration work or investment in infrastructure a Sisyphean task.

And in general, Bakhmut, frankly, from both the Ukrainian and the Russian bell towers, this story is more propaganda than pragmatic. Some, with tenacity worthy of better use, sacrificed thousands of people to defend the city, others sacrificed no less people to take it.

And the last doubts that in the course of this play not only the Ukrainian mobresource, but also the human resource of the Russian PMC are being “ground down” and “grinded down” were dispelled by Prigozhin himself in his terrible night video against the backdrop of the bodies of the dead Wagner contract soldiers. If we take the reported daily losses of “Wagner” as a basis, we get at least 4 thousand “two hundredths” over the last month of fierce fighting. This is not my mathematics, but Prigogine’s own.

And now we come to the main thing. Whoever replaces the Wagner with the LBS, however, continuing to fight the same way as now, with a slow advance of 170 meters per day and the accompanying demolition of everything around, is pure madness. And not only because of the colossal losses and destruction, but also because of the absolute inability to solve the main stated problem in this way - that is, the Ukrainian threat.

_{There are dozens and hundreds of such Bakhmuts ahead of the Russian army. And if everyone takes six months with monstrous losses, this is a task with the prospect of being solved before the carrot plot.}

And in general, it is possible to inflict a local defeat on Ukraine in the Donbass. But it is obvious that it is impossible to achieve a radical change in the war, and even more so, Ukrainian capitulation in the Donbass. Just because Donbass is the geographical periphery of Ukraine, even the loss of which does not put the Ukrainian state on the brink of collapse.

Economically, Donbass has long been no longer a donor to the Ukrainian budget. Most of the Kiev region has long been lost, and the smaller part, where Ukraine still remains, is practically destroyed and depopulated. Ukraine holds on to these territories more for political reasons than because it cannot survive without them. Fighting with Ukraine in the Donbass is the same as attacking Russia from Chukotka and so on in the Chukotka tundra for years and getting bogged down in local battles.

_{It is possible to truly close the Ukrainian issue (if you really set such a task in real life, and not just imitate an offensive one teaspoon at a time while waiting for the enemy to ripen for negotiations) only by shifting the center of gravity of the fighting closer to the political-administrative and demographic heart of Ukraine. That is, to the northern theater of military operations, in the area of ​​Kyiv, Chernigov, Zhitomir, Sumy and Kharkov.}

Moreover, and this is not my opinion, but that of real military experts, moving the center of gravity of the fighting closer to the Ukrainian capital would automatically remove the need to storm Ukrainian fortifications in the Donbass from the agenda. The Ukrainians would withdraw their troops from there themselves - to protect the capital.

Of course, there would still be a risk that the exposure of the front in Donbass would provoke an offensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the same Donetsk, but it is unlikely that this would result in anything serious if, in parallel, Kiev was shelled with the same intensity as Bakhmut is today. The threat of losing the capital would force the Ukrainian Armed Forces to pull all reserves there.

It is clear that everything described is nothing more than an amateur’s sketch, however, many serious experts in military affairs write about the same or approximately the same things. And it is not without reason that the Ukrainians themselves always suspect the Russian Federation and Belarus of their readiness to open a “second front” and are intensively preparing to defend themselves in this direction. And this preparation, by the way, is not in vain - one way or another, and there will no longer be a second surprise effect similar to the February 2022 one.