The War in Ukraine: Do You Have a Counter Offense?

On May 20th, Russian forces managed to take control over the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. The ‘battle of aBakhmut’, which has been raging for nine months, has seen some of the bloodiest fighting in Europe since World War 2. With Ukraine investing a lot of its resources in defending the city, the fight for it took on a symbolic significance. In his speech to the U.S. Congress last year, President Volodymyr Zelensky even compared it to the decisive battle of Saratoga in the American war of independence.

But now, thanks primarily to the Wagner Group, Bakhmut is in Russian hands. What are the strategic implications of the ‘fall’, so to speak, of Bakhmut? Is it a pyrrhic victory for the Russians, as Ukraine and western observers seem to suggest? Whose forces have been degraded more by this long-drawn battle of attrition?

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