By Stephen Bryen, CSP May 5, 2023
There is no doubt now that Bakhmut will soon fall to the Russians. How soon? Probably a few days and no more than one week.
Ukraine says it has managed to evacuate its elite forces from the city, leaving only rearguard elements to hang on until the end. Efforts by Ukraine to provide counterattacks have not borne fruit, and all efforts have been stopped by Russian paratroopers and Wagner PMC fighters, along with generous amounts of Russian artillery.
Meanwhile, the Russians themselves are refocusing on the newly created Ukrainian brigades that are supposed to lead the counteroffensive. These are the brigades that have been stuffed up to their ears with Western hardware but lack well-trained troops.
Such brigades also face complex, perhaps impossible, logistical challenges, since the Western supplies require spare parts, repair centers and in many cases different types of ammunition. Even the Leopard II tanks supplied can’t all use the same ammunition.
More worrisome for Ukraine’s army is the lack of replacement supplies if their coming offensive drags on. Simply put, there are almost no supplies around. The US is mostly out of ammunition and has been stripping stockpiles in South Korea and Israel – something that has alarmed Israel’s generals, who think a hot war with Iran is only weeks away.
The South Koreans have kept quiet, mostly because President Yoon Suk Yeol has just completed a visit to Washington that was stage-managed to make Joe Biden look good. So far as can be determined, the visit was completely ceremonial and basically fruitless.
(Strictly speaking, the only result was that Yoon used the occasion of a state dinner to sing “American Pie,” no matter whether Joe drove his Chevy to the levee, or went over the side. The fact that the levee was dry is a current-time social commentary.)
At the eleventh hour, Ukraine is trying hard to recruit more soldiers, sometimes using rough tactics to dragoon young men. Such troops can’t possibly be trained in time. Practically speaking they are, at most, cannon fodder.
But the Ukrainians want to look credible to their American masters, so not only do they grab young people from street corners or in front of popular watering holes such as McDonald’s, but they beat them up if they resist.
The same is happening to any Ukrainian journalist who tries to write anything the so-called democratic government of Ukraine does not like. Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime has arrested political opponents or chased them out of the country, or worse. And these days Ukrainian special operations groups are assassinating journalists and commentators in Russia and elsewhere who oppose Ukraine.
After Bakhmut is gone, it is possible the Russians will suggest negotiations with the United States. Biden, who is running for re-election, does not want any status quo change until he is re-elected.
But Biden’s re-election is getting more and more remote as the semi-senile president stumbles and bumbles and as a number of his government’s policies will, in the end, bring down his administration notwithstanding his faltering mental status or how many dead Ukrainians pay the price for his re-election effort.
A vast wave of immigrants will soon flood across the southern border of the US; new taxes will soon be slapped on mortgages for people with good credit scores (without bothering to get congressional approval); inflation keeps killing the middle class; and worst of all, the Biden administration demands control of all children’s sexuality without the parents having any say-so.
Without negotiations, the Russians will attempt to systematically destroy Ukraine’s new brigades. With larger forces, better tactics, and more air power, air defenses and ground equipment, the Russians could very well defeat the Ukrainian army and force regime change in Kiev.
In short, in the not-too-distant future, Biden may have to hang up his walker and Zelensky may be looking for a job in California.
@Michael
This is both unfair and untrue. I asked a fair question, nothing more. You seem to have responded but let us look at your response and then at what you originally stated.
1.
You state
The Wagner Group is not the most effective Russian soldiers. They have been fighting in Bakhmut since a year ago after the fall of Popasna, but only began to make earnest gains late last fall when the Russian army withdrew Proghozhin’s exclusive command of the Bakhmut campaign, specifically because he failed to make significant gains. These mercenaries have been used to clear the urban center of Bahmut over the course of a year. Notably, the Russian army took control over the heavily defended military base of Marioupol in just a few months, but then again, they did not have ‘Russia’s most effective soldiers’, as you like to describe the Wagner Group, to help slow their task. In any event, many may be unaware, but Prighozin has been making such threats of leaving the line of battle since he first took up position around Bakhmut a year ago.
2.
The evacuation of civilians is something which Russia has taken to do to protect the civilians from Ukrainian ‘cleansing’ campaigns against any civilians they care to cleanse following or during their big arrow campaigns, which it is no secret that Ukraine is expected to undertake in the coming days. Of course, no one, and I mean no one, is very hopeful of Ukraine’s potential success, but the population will suffer simply due to the Ukrainian attempt, which is why they are being evacuated.
3.
You said
Kagan’s ISW, disagrees with this statement:
Since two weeks ago, when this latest fake news was peddled, ISW has not changed their assessment on this point. Mind you, I do NOT find ISW to be a terribly credible source, but given that you seem aligned with the Neocon Narrative, I suggest the most sympatheic iteration of that narrative will be found on Kagan’s Ukraine cheerleading squad at the ISW.
But whatever the standing of Ukraine along the river in Kherson, and whatever the motivation for the removal of the citizens in the Kherson Oblast, it is some 250 miles south of Bakhmut where you claimed that
Wagner Group is not being routed, and their positions are not being surrendered. Ukraine is not advancing and Russia is not retreating.
Hence, as I stated before and do so again now, there is no indication from anyone that Russia is on the run in Bakhmut. So who is gaslighting whom?
Of course, I stand in the majority, even with the greatest allies and pundits of Ukraine in doubting their capability to do what they have yet to do during this war – take a heavily Russian entrenched position by force from the enemy while it was being well defended. But war is a messy business, so the proof will lie in the proving, and a week may not even be enough time for Ukraine to muster their well expected to fail attack. In any event, I will be here next week to not gaslight you again with the facts, whether they do or don’t.
Hi, Peloni. You said,
Peloni, you seem to be trying to gaslight me, for whatever reason. Whether I am mad, or you yourself are having an episode of cognitive dissonance, remains to be seen. Just hang loose for a week or so, and we will see which of us is nuts. For now, just a few glaring realities:
1. Russia’s most effective soldiers, the ones making virtually ALL the advances in the “Russian Winter Offensive”, are quitting — packing it in. Their leader has burned all bridges, in criticizing and insulting the Russian High Command.
2. 70,000 Russians are being evacuated from the Kherson Oblast.
3. Ukraine has secured at least one beachhead over the Dnepro River.
It doesn’t take a loss of sanity, to see that this represents Russia “on the run”. Still, don’t believe me; believe your own eyes in the coming weeks. Victoria Nuland has nothing to do with this.
@Michael
What makes you believe that it is the Russians who are on the run? The Kagan run Institute for the Study of War, which is about as big of a neocon cheering squad that Ukraine has, states that
If Kagan, who is married to Victoria Nuland, is acknowledging a Russian advance in Bakhmut, even marginally, it hardly seems likely that your belief that the Russians are being ‘on the run’ is remotely accurate.
Talk to me about it in a week. At the moment, the Russians are on the run there!
Also, further south,