Russia rages that Ukraine ‘is successful south of Bakhmut’
Joel Gehrke
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Ukraine’s troops are wearing down Russia’s occupying forces near Bakhmut, according to Russian military and pro-war bloggers, as a combination of Western artillery and poor Russian leadership take their toll.
“If I wrote this right away, then there would probably be a lot of swearing,” one Russian officer wrote in a lengthy social media post spotlighted by the War Translated Project. “And so, the enemy is successful south of Bakhmut. Due to what reasons? The first and main reason is the loss of combat capability of units in the area.”
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That post is one of several lengthy public criticisms to surface on the Russian side in recent days amid widespread Western angst about the slow progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The emerging complaints point to a potential Ukrainian success in a high-profile area, given that Bakhmut was the focal point of a monthslong struggle that culminated in Wagner Group forces declaring victory and announcing their withdrawal.
“The command decided that the more units it puts per kilometer of the front, the more chances there are for a stable defense,” the officer wrote. “But in reality, we see a layer cake of units that are simply pushed into unequipped lines there. There are so many people that ever 10-15 meters someone is hiding under the remnants of greenery, in holes, not even preparing for any kinds of defense.”
That embittered outlook contrasts with the struggles that Ukrainian forces have faced elsewhere along the front lines, difficulties that have called into question the efficacy of Ukrainian troops that have been armed and trained by Western powers but lack the experience needed to coordinate complex ground offensives.
“The new brigades have not been successful,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow Michael Kofman, who returned recently from his third research trip to Ukraine, told War on the Rocks in a podcast released Thursday. “By and large, experienced units allocated to this offensive, and the more experienced brigades fighting in Bakhmut, have consistently done and performed better without Western equipment than the Western-trained brigades.”
Ukrainian officials have shifted to a more familiar approach of targeting Russian supply lines while making their own methodical advances. And President Joe Biden’s decision to open the vast U.S. stockpiles of cluster munitions to Ukrainian artillerymen has eased an ammunition crunch that otherwise might have shortened the counter-offensive.
“The United States has effectively resourced, for the first time in this fight, in providing the Ukrainian military a degree of superiority in artillery fires,” Kofman said, putting extra stress on the “degree” of that advantage.
“It’s a much smarter and more efficacious option, at least right now, for this war, to better enable Ukrainian military to fight the way it knows how to and to play to its advantages and strengths,” Kofman said.
Ukrainian artillery, in combination with aerial drone attacks, is proving especially painful for the Russians south of Bakhmut, near the town of Klishchiivka, according to pro-Russian voices.
“This forward movement of the enemy is facilitated by the persistent total advantage of the enemy both in the quantity and quality of the UAV, and in the field of electronic warfare,” wrote pro-Russian military blogger Andrey Murozov, also known as Murz. “As I already wrote, the enemy in counter-battery combat does not spare the HIMARS for our individual guns, realizing that a successful defense relies on artillery.”
His account offers a battlefield rationale for the Russian State Duma’s recent move to expand the age range of Russians eligible for conscription.
“While Moscow admits that the first wave of mobilization was incompetently [screwed] up, the troops need a lot of replenishment and Moscow will decide to continue mobilization,” Murozov wrote. “There aren’t really other options than slowly retreating, destroying as many [Ukrainian troops] as possible, preserving your people as much as possible and preventing the enemy from breaking through the front.”
In many areas across the front, Ukrainian forces face the difficulty that Russian troops can retreat into prepared fortifications, Kofman noted, but Ukrainian commanders seem to have committed additional forces in some areas to press for a breakthrough.
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“So on the Russian military side, I think they’re definitely on the worst end of the attrition curve, but I don’t believe that the Russian line is overall very thin or that they lack reserves in terms of the need for grouping of forces and some of the other units,” he said. “I still think they have some forces available that could be attrited out over time. You can see gradually than suddenly effect take place, but the way Ukraine is forced to somewhat drip-feed combat arms to the battlefield, it’s very hard to achieve breakthrough.”
Murz struck a pessimistic note. “I think that the whole of August and the whole of September will be very difficult,” he wrote. “And if the enemy manages to break through the front, then catastrophic. And what I already predicted will happen — untrained mobilized directly ‘from the trains’ will be thrown into battle with the corresponding results.”