Ukraine faces difficult choices about how much deeper its military should get drawn into a protracted fight over the besieged city of Bakhmut, as Kyiv prepares for a new counteroffensive elsewhere on the front that requires conserving weapons, ammunition, and experienced fighters.
Russia has escalated its assault in the area in recent days, unleashing savage fighting that has underscored the high cost of the battle. Russian mercenaries and released convicts from the Wagner group pushed into the neighboring salt-mining town of Soledar and inched closer to Bakhmut, the capture of which has eluded them for months despite an advantage in firepower and the willingness to sacrifice troops.
“When we kill five out of 10 of their soldiers at once, they are replenished again to 10 over several hours,” said Andriy Kryshchenko, a deputy battalion commander of a National Guard unit posted to the south of the city.
“Although they storm in small groups, people are constantly replenished, which creates an opportunity for them to storm positions very often — sometimes five, six, seven times during the day,” Kryshchenko said.
The Ukrainian military must now decide how many more forces and how much more ammunition and weaponry it can expend to continue defending Bakhmut — a city that many military analysts view as having relatively little strategic significance to the broader battlefield, but which has become freighted with political symbolism for both sides.0