Bakhmut Battle
Bakhmut Battle
Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 will include the Battle of Donbas as part of the eastern Ukraine operation.
Bakhmut Battle
On the edges of Bakhmut, there was a no-land. man's
1 August 2022 to the present (4 months and 2 weeks)
Location Bakhmut in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk
Those coordinates are 48.5950°N 38.0000°E.
Status Ongoing
Belligerents
Russia
Paraphrase: Peoples' republic
People's Republic of Luhansk
Ukraine
leaders and commanders
Russia Alexander Nagin [1] Ukraine лександр TARNAVSKIY
Ukraine Bereza Yurii [3]
Ukraine Mikheichenko, Andriy
Involved units: PMC Wagner
[5]
Defense Forces of Russia
Militia of the Donetsk People's Republic[6]
the ground forces of Ukraine
93rd Mechanized Brigade, 93 р 1.
[6]
58th Motorized Brigade, 58.svg
[7]
53rd Mechanized Brigade 53.svg
[8]
24th Mechanized Brigade (svg)
[9]
Patch for the 57th Motorized Brigade, in png
[10]
(paraphrase Para ) (para ) Mountain assault unit 10th Brigade [11]
Ukrainian Free Russian Legion patch.svg Legion of Freedom of Russia [12]
Бaтальйон імені Джохара Дудаєва.png Battalion of Dzhokhar Dudayev[13]
Sheikh Mansur battalion's insignia. She Man [paraphrase Man]
branch SSI.svg for the territorial defence forces territorial defence forces[15]
Forces for Special Operations[15]
losses and casualties
Unknown, assumed heavy
Unknown, assumed heavy
[16]
dead more than 120 civilians
[17]
Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022
The Battle of Bakhmut is a continuous sequence of combat encounters between the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces in the vicinity of the city of Bakhmut in the 2022 conflict over the Donbas. Bakhmut was first shelled in May 2022, but the main attack on the city started on 1 August when Russian soldiers advanced from the Popasna region after Ukrainian forces left the city. [18] The primary attack force is made up mostly of mercenaries from the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, assisted by regular Russian troops and separatist elements from the DPR and LPR. [6] [19][5]
https://screenplay.biz/the-girl-in-kherson/
The Bakhmut front was one of the few front lines in Ukraine where Russia remained on the offensive as of late 2022, following Ukraine's Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives.
[20] In November 2022, attacks on the city increased as newly recruited recruits and soldiers redeployed from the Kherson front joined the assaulting Russian forces. [21] [22] By this point, much of the front line had turned into a positional trench battle, with heavy losses on both sides but no real gains. [23]
Contents
1 Prelude \s2 Battle \s3 Casualties
3. Military deaths; 3.2 civilian deaths
4 Analysis
5 References
Prelude
Primary Articles Donbass War and Eastern Ukraine Offensive 2022
Bakhmut apartment block following a Russian bombing. Since May, the city has been shelled. [24]
One of the main objectives of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was to take control of the Donbas region, which includes the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk. Following the battles of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk in early July, Russia and rebel troops took all of Luhansk oblast, and the battleground shifted towards the cities of Sloviansk, Bakhmut, and Soledar. Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, a Ukrainian Brigadier General, asserted that Russia had an advantage in personnel over Ukraine on the eastern front of five to one prior to the combat in Bakhmut. [25]
Russian forces started pounding Bakhmut on May 17; five people, including a two-year-old child, died as a result.
[26]
[27] Ukrainian soldiers left Popasna after it fell on May 22 in order to fortify their positions at Bakhmut. [18] The remaining Ukrainian troops in the Lysychansk-Sievierodonetsk region are in danger because Russian forces were able to move on the Bakhmut-Lysychansk roadway. [28] [29] Although battle began on May 30 along the Kostiantynivka-Bakhmut highway, where Ukrainian forces successfully defended the roadway, the Russian checkpoint along the route was later destroyed. [30] [31]
Following the start of the fight of Siversk on July 3, the shelling of Bakhmut intensified during the remainder of June and July.
[32] On 25 July, Ukrainian forces retreated from the Vuhlehirska Power Station, along with the surrounding village of Novoluhanske, providing Russian and separatist forces a "minor tactical edge" towards Bakhmut.
[33] On July 27, two days later, Russian shelling of Bakhmut resulted in the deaths of three civilians and the injury of three more.
[34]
[35]
Battle
Ukrainian trench during the battle, November 2022
Russian soldiers conducted significant offensive assaults on areas south and southeast of Bakhmut on August 1. Both the Russian Ministry of Defense and pro-Russian Telegram channels stated that the fight of Bakhmut had begun. [36] [37] The next day, Ukraine reported that Russian forces had intensified their airstrikes and shelling of the city and had started a land assault on the southeast. [38] On August 4, mercenaries from the Wagner Group were able to get past Ukrainian forces and into Patrice Lumumba Street, which is on the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut. [39]
Russian forces continued to advance towards Bakhmut from the south during the following days. On August 14, the Ukrainian military command reported that Russian forces had "limited success" close to Bakhmut, without providing any details.
[40]
On September 21, the Martynov Palace of Culture, which served as the humanitarian headquarters, was destroyed by nighttime shelling in the heart of the city. The local fire department was bombarded while the fire was being put out, and they said that two SES employees were hurt and that equipment had been destroyed. [41] Russian shelling during the night partially demolished a five-story building. [42] [43]
On the southern and southeasterly borders of Bakhmut, Russian forces advanced into the villages of Zaitseve and Opytne on October 7. The UK Defense Ministry asserted that Russian troops had moved closer to Bakhmut on October 10.
[44]
[45] Opytne, 3 km south of Bakhmut, and Ivanhrad were allegedly taken by Russian forces on October 12; nevertheless, both towns were still under attack. [46] According to Ukrainian reports, a modest counteroffensive on October 24 drove Russian forces from a few factories on the city's eastern outskirts. [47]
By the beginning of November, the conflict in the area of Bakhmut had deteriorated into a trench war, with neither side gaining any meaningful gains and hundreds of deaths being recorded daily amidst ferocious shelling and artillery battles.
[15]
[23] In an interview on November 1st, Ukrainian journalist Yurii Butusov discussed how the conflict was evolving. Butusov stated that Russian soldiers had been attacking Bakhmut and its surroundings since early May and had sustained "massive losses every day," but asserted that they were changing their strategies to counter the Ukrainian defenders' growing exhaustion. In order to breach defence lines along "narrow" stretches of the front, the Russians were gathering numerous small groups of soldiers, he observed. [48]
Ukrainian soldier in a trench near Bakhmut, November 2022
Through the 28th and 29th of November, Russian forces broke through the defences along Bakhmut's southern flank, taking the villages of Andriivka, Ozarianivka, and Zelenopillia and making modest gains in Opytne.
[49]
Kurdyumivka, a settlement close to Ozarianivka, was attacked by Wagner soldiers, and some Russian milbloggers reported that the settlement had been taken.
[51] South of Bakhmut, Russian forces also attacked Ukrainian defences. [52] [53] The Bakhmut front was described as "the most violent, merciless, and brutal sector... in the Russian-Ukrainian war so far" by Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine's Eastern Command, on December 3. He added that the Russians had launched 261 artillery attacks in the previous day alone. [54] A Georgian military volunteer revealed to the media the same day that a group of Georgian volunteers had been cornered during fighting near Bakhmut. The commander was wounded and five or six volunteers, serving in Ukraine's 57th Brigade, had been slain, causing Georgian president Salome Zourabichvili to express condolences. [10] The Russian defence ministry stated that their forces, including included Wagner fighters, had effectively resisted Ukrainian counterattacks south of Bakhmut on the nights of December 6–7. [55]
Bakhmut was referred to as "another Donbas city that the Russian army put into charred ruins" by President Zelenskyy on December 9. Petro Stone, a former soldier and participant in the conflict, described the Bakhmut front as a "meat grinder" and claimed that the Russians were "covering Bakhmut with fire 24/7." [56] The 24th Mechanized Brigade of Ukraine's soldiers spoke to the media about recent battles, including one multi-day fighting with 50 Russian troops concealed in a treeline where, in some spots, "we were only 100 metres away." The Wagner PMC fighters served as the primary assault troops, according to Ukrainian soldiers, who also stated that recently mobilised Russian recruits known as mobiks held defensive positions while poorly equipped mobiks (first line Russian infantry) frequently attacked without tank assistance. One Ukrainian artilleryman claimed that "80%" of the remaining civilian population was pro-Russian and was surviving in basements and being fed by mobile food trucks that occasionally entered the city. [9] [57]
For those of you who are not familiar with the term "para-warfare" i.e. Wagner allegedly attacked Pidhorodne, which is situated on Bakhmut's northeastern side, and achieved modest gains amidst fierce combat in Opytne, which is situated on the southern approach to Bakhmut. [58] [59] At the time, the reports of Russian advances had not been independently verified, but the Ukrainian General Staff acknowledged fighting in Bakhmutske, Soledar, and Pidhorodne while maintaining that it had repulsed all attacks. On 11 December a railway bridge across the E40 (M-03) highway north of Bakhmut was demolished; the Russians accused the Ukrainians of damaging it to prevent further Russian advances towards Sloviansk. [60][61][62] case daycasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecasecase According to the Ukrainian General Staff, they effectively withstood assaults launched from the Kurdiumivka and Soledar directions, respectively, on Bakhmut to the northeast and south. [63][64][65][66]
Casualties
The actual number of military and civilian losses as a result of the conflict is unknown because of the fog of war and purposefully withheld casualty estimates from both sides. Casualties can be anticipated to be significant, though, as the cost of combat circumstances unknown since the First and Second World Wars is certain to be steep. Western media outlets calculated that each day, hundreds of civilians and military personnel on both sides were killed or injured. [67]
soldiers lost in action
On November 10, the Ukrainians asserted that battle near Bakhmut had cost the Wagner group up to 140 losses in the previous day, including more than 40 troops who died.
[68] The New York Times noted on November 27 that both troops had suffered numerous losses, and it estimated that 290 Ukrainians had been injured in the previous 36 hours. [69]
The Ukrainian government reported in early December that 50 to 100 Russian soldiers were dying daily in the Bakhmut sector.
[70]
civilian deaths
On November 5, the Bakhmut deputy mayor asserted that around 120 citizens had died inside the municipal limits.
[71] By early December, just between 7,000 and 15,000 of Bakhmut's prewar population of 80,000 remained in the city. [72] [73]
Analysis
The fight of Bakhmut has been hailed as one of the bloodiest engagements of the 21st century, with the battlefield being described as a "meat grinder" and a "vortex" for both the Ukrainian and Russian troops.
[74]
[75] Volunteers, the media, and government officials alike compared fighting in Bakhmut to conditions on the western front of World War I due to the unusually high casualties, expensive ground assaults that gained very little ground, and shell-pocked landscapes. [76] [77] The commander of the Mozart Group, a foreign volunteer organisation in Ukraine, retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Andrew Milburn, compared the terrain around Bakhmut to Passchendaele and the city itself to Dresden during World War II. [78]
The majority of the Wagner PMC mercenaries and recently mobilised recruits have made up the Russian assault forces. Following the Russian retreat from Kherson, there were some rumours in mid-November that Russia may have redeployed some forces from the Kherson front to areas close to Bakhmut to support the fighters of the Wagner Group, as well as reinforcements from recently conscripted personnel. The 93rd Mechanized Brigade and the 58th Motorized Brigade made up the "hodgepodge of formations" that made up the Ukrainian forces until later, when numerous other units were added to fill up the gaps left by the significant losses. [74] According to reports, the Ukrainians were also bolstering Bakhmut with special operations soldiers and territorial defence groups. [22] [15] After receiving 450 Iranian-made drones in the middle of October, Russia began attacking Bakhmut with them. [79]
The total strategic usefulness of Bakhmut has been regarded dubious by many observers, with some stating the money and lives Russia expended attacking the city vastly surpassed its importance.
[80] Defense analyst Konrad Muzyka and expert on Russian security at University College London Mark Galeotti suggested Bakhmut's value for Russia is a matter of prestige — to show a victory to the Russian public after a string of setbacks on other fronts — and of the sunk cost fallacy, as Russia poured so many resources and manpower into the operation that it becomes difficult to admit a defeat. [80] According to retired Ukrainian colonel Serhiy Grabskiy, Wagner Group's leader Yevgeny Prigozhin may have been given the task of seizing Bakhmut by the Kremlin since it could result in major financial and political benefits for him. [20] Wagner was allegedly turning Bakhmut into a "meat grinder" on purpose, according to Prighozhin, in order to severely deplete the front-line Ukrainian soldiers via attrition. [81]