Ukraine grinds away at Wagner Group in Bakhmut
What happened
The battle for Bakhmut intensified this week, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed not to withdraw his troops even after Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group claimed control of the city’s east. The small salt-mining city has been the focus of Russia’s offensive for months, and Russian forces now surround it on three sides. Wagner Group commanders have been sending in waves of unseasoned prison recruits, knowing they will be mowed down by Ukrainian artillery, so the commanders can see the locations of the Ukrainian guns and launch targeted attacks. The carnage has been immense. Russia has lost an estimated 30,000 soldiers in Bakhmut, seven times the Ukrainian casualties, and Ukrainians say they’ve seen Russians reduced to fighting in hand-to-hand combat armed only with shovels. While some Western military analysts have suggested that Ukraine should abandon the town and devote its resources to preparing for a southern counteroffensive, Ukrainian commanders said that continuing to fight in Bakhmut was key to depleting Russia’s forces. “This is their last stand,” Col. Serhiy Cherevaty told Radio Liberty.
A grainy 12-second video showing what appeared to be the machine-gun execution by Russian forces of a Ukrainian soldier circulated widely on social media this week. The Ukrainian military said it believed the man was a soldier with the 30th Mechanized Brigade who had been fighting near Bakhmut and went missing last month. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the incident, calling it “another [piece of] proof this war is genocidal.”
What the columnists said
Bakhmut has come to symbolize “the grinding war of attrition in Ukraine,” said Claire Parker in The Washington Post. While the city is not strategically important, it has gained “outsize political importance for both sides” simply because the fighting has been so intense. Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is using the battle there as a showpiece as he “jockeys with Russia’s military chiefs for influence.” And for Ukrainians, “‘Bakhmut holds’ is a rallying cry.”
The executed soldier in the video has become another “icon of defiance,” said Cathy Young in The Bulwark. The clip shows him standing in a shallow trench, looking exhausted but calmly smoking a cigarette. Showing little emotion, he calls out the national salute “Slava Ukraini”—“Glory to Ukraine”—just before off-camera Russians curse at him and release “a burst of automatic gunfire.” With his image already appearing on posters and murals, his “senseless killing” will almost certainly make Ukrainians “more determined to win.”
Unfortunately, the Biden administration is helping to prolong the war through its reluctance to send Ukraine advanced weaponry, said Matthew Continetti in National Review. With no decisive Ukrainian advances in months, U.S. public support for aid to Ukraine is slipping. The administration needs a victory strategy now, and that should include invoking the Defense Production Act and ramping up defense spending. Ukraine is “the central front in the fight for freedom,” and it’s in America’s interest to give Zelensky all he needs—“and when he asks for it.”