UPDATE: Thursday, Mar 2, 2023 · 6:08:11 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Ukraine Pravda points out one of the big reasons that it’s so hard to get good information concerning Bakhmut at the moment. Russia is flooding the zone, so that on Telegram and Twitter, as well as other social media, any search requires wading a swamp of Russian disinformation.
“Today, there is an intensification of the Russian information campaign accompanying the storming of Bakhmut. The enemy is launching several narratives aimed at demoralising our society and military."
The defense of Bakhmut has been, and still is, heroic. Russia’s losses there have been tremendous; literally unsupportable over an extended campaign. Putin and Wagner Group can’t gloss over either of these facts. Also, at this hour, Bakhmut holds.
As of early afternoon in Ukraine … Bakhmut holds. As expected, Russian forces have moved into the eastern areas of the city on the other side of the narrow Bakhmutovka River. Fighting is still reported in the area, but that could be fire from across the river. On Thursday morning, Wagner Group was busy filming a new promotional video down along Patrisa Lumumby Street, gloating over their occupation of all those buildings that were fought over for so long. The trash dump, the concrete factory, the winery—it’s all destroyed, but it’s all in their control now.
Fighting continues in the city; block-by-block fighting is going on in both the north and the south. Russia has reportedly used a TOS-1 to launch thermobaric bombs into the city’s core. I have no idea at this point what has happened to the civilians who remain in Bakhmut or where they could possibly be living.
Bakhmut, Mariupol, Bucha, and innumerable smaller towns and villages across Ukraine now testify to what the coming of Russia means. This isn’t an abstract change in leadership in some faraway capital or the redrawing of some lines on a map. It’s the erasing of joy, freedom, and life.
For Russia, Bakhmut has been little more than a convenient location, a point at which it can unload large amounts of men and materiel and advance them toward a point along the front. In a way, that they were attacking this location at all is a demonstration of their inability to juggle logistics and supply a field army more than a few kilometers from a disembarkation point.
Just a year before the war came to the city, the Ukrainian army was in Bakhmut for a very different reason: Adding still more trees to a city already known for its parks and verdant pathways.
All those trees lie in splinters now, and the only “landscaping project” that Bakhmut has seen over the last eight months is one that involves craters and ruin.
For Ukraine, Bakhmut has been a terrible, but necessary sacrifice. It has been the city that served as a killing ground for those Russian forces by the hundreds and the thousands. It’s been the graveyard of Russian tanks, fighting vehicles, artillery, helicopters, and jets. It’s been the place where the fight was happening, every day, 24/7, since Russian forces reached the area at the end of May last year.
Just like the many Ukrainian soldiers who have been lost, Bakhmut has laid down its life, brick by brick, so that other cities and other towns might be spared. The fight has been there, so that it would not be elsewhere.
This isn’t an obituary. On this day, Bakhmut holds … but it holds by the skin of its teeth. Whether it’s now prudent to maintain forces in Bakhmut and to keep the fight there a few days (or weeks?) longer is unclear. Ukrainian officials have admitted that the time for withdrawal may be near. Ukrainian soldiers are still sending out messages from inside the city, reassuring their nation and the world that they are still ready to fight for every meter.
But Bakhmut has given almost everything it has. These forces have done almost everything they can. Unless the Ukrainian military has some kind of miracle jarred up, ready to be unleashed, these guys deserve the chance to leave Bakhmut, wash away the dust and the blood, and fight again before Russia brings its idea of “liberation” to another city.
On Thursday, Bakhmut holds. But it's almost time for the city to rest. Until later.
One old enemy now apparently giving some assistance to Ukraine in the fight to hold that final paved road in and out of the city—General Mud. Over the last week, temperatures around Bakhmut have notched up several degrees. The snow has melted everywhere except in the shadow of some ruined buildings, and Russian efforts to drive that advance south from the area between Berkhivka and Yahidne have run into an uncomfortable issue: There are no roads there. Or at least, no paved roads.
Attempts to bring up Russian armor have resulted in the same kind of wallowing in mud that stalled Ukrainian progress toward Kreminna and Svatove in the fall. The issue affected Russian progress outside the city so strongly on Wednesday that it’s not clear there was any Russian progress on Wednesday. The lines west of the city look to be almost exactly where they were a day before.
Defensive positions are also miserable, with trenches half full of icy, muddy water. But even getting infantry across the fields above the “road of life” appears to be a challenge. Now it’s inside the city— where Russian forces can walk without sinking to their knees, and vehicles can roll from block to block—where Russian forces are making small advances.
If that mud bath west of the city makes it difficult for Russian forces to advance (and leaves forces who attempt to advance almost at the mercy of artillery), it also makes it tactically difficult to send any relief force that might strike that Russian advance from the side.
Both President Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have mentioned the possibility of withdrawing from Bakhmut in the last day, and even some of the soldiers on the ground have posted videos saying that it’s time to come out and “straighten the front line” so that it can be better defended.
If the weather is affecting Russian movements as strongly as some sources indicate, then it seems Ukraine may have a window. They could use that time to bring more forces down the paved road from Chasiv Yar to reinforce the city. They could use that time for forces inside the city to continue extracting a high price for every Russian advance. Or they could use that time to withdraw from Bakhmut before Russia is able to bring the exit route under fire control.
The big news in Russia on Thursday is the war in Russia. According to officials in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast, a group of “Ukrainian saboteurs” crossed the border, entered the village of Liubechane, and fired on vehicles driving down the street. Later Russian propaganda claims showed pictures of a bullet-ridden school bus, but local officials denied that any such shooting of a bus took place. The group, which was described as 40-50 people, then went to the village of Sushany and apparently terrified the population there. Russian state media claims the group took six people in Sushany temporarily hostage before being driven off by Russian national guard troops.
While Russian state news agencies are have described the group as a “sabotage and reconnaissance group” from the Ukrainian military, Ukraine is denying any involvement in these cross-border attacks. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the Russian claims a “classic provocation” and indicated that this is a “false flag” operation. The Ukrainian military has also denied any involvement, but military officials did seem to indicate that some kind of attack did actually take place in the Bryansk area.
As it happens, there is a group very willing to take responsibility for these actions. The group that is claiming to be behind the Bryansk attack is an actual neo-Nazi militia—a group that believes Putin is not Russian enough, in that he’s not demanding that Russia become an all-white Russian ethnostate and drive out those other groups that happen to occupy much of Russia simply because it’s been their home for centuries, if not millennia.
This group was founded by Denis “WhiteRex” Kapustin—a genuine fascist Russian asshole—who has previously organized far-right militants along the Ukraine-Russia border. The flag the group is carrying is the flag of the ROA, a Russian group that collaborated with the Nazis in World War II.
So, is this the group actually behind what looks to be a minor skirmish in a pair of small border villages? Possibly. Ukraine has been pretty scrupulous about not crossing the hundreds of kilometers of border it shares with Russia, partially because it’s one of those things that seems to bother Western nations who are providing assistance to Ukraine. The few cross-border actions Ukraine has undertaken have been extremely targeted actions like the attacks on ammunition and fuel storage at Belgorod, across the border from Kharkiv.
However, many observers have pointed out that the uniforms of these Russian fascists seem a bit too clean, and their production values a bit too good, for people actually involved in any kind of military raid. So there’s some doubt that Kapustin was actually behind this, no matter how eager he may be to claim it.
But the most amusing part of this whole thing is that Vladimir Putin seems to have canceled a trip to southern Russia that was planned for today because of concerns about this “sabotage group.”
You read that right. Joe Biden recently visited Kyiv during an air raid. Zelenskyy is out there every day. But following a small attack on two tiny border villages, Vladimir Putin has canceled a visit to a whole area of Russia. Putin is afraid to travel in his own country.
Speaking of people going berzerk over the smallest thing, there were reports earlier in the week of an “attack” on an airbase in Belarus, with claims going all up and down the scale, including claims that a Russian Beriev A-50 AWACS plane had been destroyed. As with the attack on the border villages, Russia quickly pointed the finger at Ukraine.
The truth seems to be that local Belarus partisans flew a drone into the area of the airpoint, cheekily pausing for a moment to actually land on the A-50, but causing no apparent damage.
It’s a shame that the partisans didn’t actually have a bomb, because it seems that the opportunity was there. Maybe someone in Poland should try releasing a few balloons. Belarus and Russia could be in a panic for weeks.
Russian forces reportedly flew a drone over Kherson and used it to drop bombs on volunteers handing out food and water to local civilians.
It's s**t like this that makes it hard to have the slightest sympathy for anyone on the Russian side.