Frontline dispatches from the besieged city of Donbas depict apocalyptic scenes of destroyed buildings and blood-soaked fields. Despite the military shortage, Ukrainian forces held their ground, inflicting heavy casualties on the Russian enemy, running low on ammunition and weapons – and paving the way for two successful counter-attacks.
This “meat grinder” strategy was implemented last summer in the eastern city of Severodonetsk. Military analysts say Kyiv has pursued similar tactics in northeastern Ukraine around Soledar, which Russia captured on Friday in what could be another pyrrhic victory for Moscow.
The fall of the city of salt mines, where fighting has raged for more than two weeks, could make it harder for Ukraine to capture nearby Bakhmut, a city of symbolic importance whose capture will bring Russia its first military success since the summer.
But Moscow’s capture of Soledar – and possibly Bhakmut – could be far less than the losses it inflicted on its forces in the war.
One adviser to Ukraine’s defense ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Kyiv’s strategic approach to Soledar and Bakhmut is similar to that in Severodonetsk. After the war, the Ukrainian forces attacked the Russian forces and recaptured Kharkiv and Kherson.
In addition, Ukrainian soldiers, reinforced with western-supplied armor, could potentially take advantage of Russian manpower losses in Bakhmut to launch a powerful counterattack, the adviser said.
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“From a true military perspective, the Severodonetsk 2.0 strategy is good for Ukraine – as long as the war costs Russian forces disproportionately more than the Ukrainian army,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. – tank.
“This is the terrible and inhumane arithmetic of this war. Unfortunately, this is the reality,” he said.
Ukrainian reserve colonel Sergei Grabskyi told the Decanted Geopolitics podcast: “The reason for keeping the Bakhmut line is to attract more Russian troops . . . chop and exhaust them. That can then create some options . . . for the Ukrainian offensive [elsewhere].”
Russian forces have suffered heavy losses. According to Ukrainian special forces officer Taras Berezovets, who was recently in Soledar, casualties among the mercenaries of Wagner’s group and the elite VDV paratroopers who led the attack numbered several thousand.
This matched the US estimate that 4,000 of Wagner’s 50,000 mercenaries had been killed on the Soledar-Bakhmut front line, with 10,000 wounded.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group, has admitted a huge loss. In a video released in the new year, the Russian warlord was filmed visiting a basement full of corpses near the front line.
“Here is a Wagner fighter who died at the front. He is now placed in a zinc coffin and will return home,” he said.
But even though the defenders usually suffer fewer casualties than the attackers, especially in urban settings, the war is not always one-way.
“Ukrainians take losses every day,” said a western official. “Russia is calculating that Ukraine will run out of resources first. It may have a hard time. Ukraine is not bulletproof.
The battles for Soledar and Bakhmut have also absorbed thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who could have been deployed elsewhere.
Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting, a military consultant in Poland, estimates that up to 12 Ukrainian brigades, equivalent to about 50,000 soldiers, have been sent to the Bakhmut front. The large numbers mean that soldiers can be rotated to stay fresh and maintain combat readiness, Muzyka said, adding that this was “one of the lessons Ukrainians learned after Severodonetsk”.
Ukrainian officials have described the waves of Russian troops launched into Soledar and Bakhmut as leading to massacres. “The enemy is literally avoiding the corpses of their own soldiers, using artillery, volley and mortar fire systems, covering their own soldiers,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on the Telegram messaging application on Monday.
But one factor can choose Moscow. In the battle for Severodonetsk, the Russian army lacked soldiers. Not now.
Moscow has mobilized 300,000 troops since September and preparations for further mobilization are “very active”, western officials said. The Ukrainian intelligence service said on Friday that Russia could be poised to draft another 500,000 personnel as part of a plan to “create an army of around 2 million”. Despite the inexperience of the forces, the forces could launch a major offensive later this year, Kyiv warned.
Meanwhile, Wagner’s mercenaries have been deployed in Soledar, freeing regular Russian units to operate elsewhere.
“It’s possible [Russia’s] the whole point: to force Ukraine into a war of attrition, “says Muzyka. “When Russia ‘burns’ them, the Ukrainians burn their combat potential.”
One unknown was the replacement last week of General Sergei Surovikin, the commander appointed by Moscow to improve military performance after its forces were diverted in Kharkiv province, with General Valery Gerasimov, the head of the Russian army.
Gerasimov has been ridiculed by Russian hardliners such as Prigozhin as he was responsible for implementing Russia’s failed full-scale invasion of Ukraine and attempted takeover of Kyiv last February.
However, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, is known to respect Gerasimov as a military strategist – and as he told The Economist in a recent interview, Russian forces are “not stupid”.
“Ideally [for Kyiv]Ukraine will be able to hold the line [around Bakhmut] with minimal forces and preparing for a spring counteroffensive,” said Anthony King, an urban warfare expert at Britain’s University of Warwick.
“But it is possible that the Ukrainian forces are corrected [around the city] instead,” he added. “Russia’s strategy may not be as stupid as it seems.”
Additional reporting by Polina Ivanova in Berlin