Mark Sumner reports in Daily Kos:
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. As of early afternoon in Ukraine … Bakhmut holds. Fighting continues in the city; block-by-block. Russia has reportedly used a TOS-1 to launch thermobaric bombs into the city’s core. 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.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.
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.
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.
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