What is the strategic importance of Bahkmut? 1 year in and this city has become the killzone of the entire war.
What is the strategic importance of Bahkmut? 1 year in and this city has become the killzone of the entire war.
What is the strategic importance of Bahkmut? 1 year in and this city has become the killzone of the entire war.
The strategic importance for Ukraine is that it's an 8-month killzone that enemies willingly run towards. Pretty simple.
For Russia, as others have said it originally had purpose when they controlled Lyman but it's now blunted. Instead, it has turned into a power struggle pissing match between Prigozhin/Wagner and Shoigu/MoD, with each desperate to be the one to lay claim to the only "victory" in almost a year. That's what fuels the continued attacks and heavy investment/loss from russia.
Explain it again to me but like i'm an 8 year old black child with down syndrome.
Ukraine was enjoying a very high K/D ratio by defending it even though it has no value.
Russia has spent so much in terms of men and armour to take it, and if they give up on it now it would shame them.
What makes it so good to defend? Is it the terrain?
No, it's just two lines of trenches facing each other. It's the same setup as the WW1 Western Front, which basically didn't move for 3 years.
The defenders have thousands of windows from which to spot from and call accurate artillery fro ma high vantage point. Even a 10 story window downtown can see beyond the city limits and two towns over since the terrain is so flat and exposed.
Attackers on the other hand see dozens of buildings just like OP pic and any single window could be their death. Until all the buildings are gone, or until all Ukrainian artillery is pushed far enough away to not be effective, it is extremely dangerous for Russians to approach the city.
Thanks
Well to take bakhmut you need to go across open farmland, up hill, against trenches and building and there are even rivers at the town outskirts with bridges rigged to blow up.
Really a nasty place to take head on so after a few months of trying now they are going around it, which makes the route far longer but they get better terrain.
The mud now is slowing the Russians down a lot though but it also makes the trenches almost unusable.
Overall the Ukrainians have a good defensive position and they will leave when the Russians successfully close the encirclement enough that the risk of envelopment becames real.
By the book the defending side would have abandoned the strong defensive positions as soon as the risk of encirclement became apparent but the Russians are advancing so slowly than the Ukrainians are ok with staying in the city till the last minute as they know that the Russians won't be able to exploit the potential encirclement advancing at a snail pace.
Also i don't think the Russians truly want to achieve a cauldron but just make the Ukrainians leave their best positions so they don't have to attack bakhmut head on. If the were to succeed in the encirclement than you would a lot of dead holohols but also Wagner's and get Wagner's stuck in nasty street fighting for months.
This war is extremely expensive for Russia throwing the government budget deep in the red. They need to get the Dombass under control ASAP and than play defensively to control costs.
Good to see a post on the situation that isn't retarded propaganda from either side.
Russians attack relentlessly because two of their top commanders are competing to be the one who can say "my guys scored a victory!"
Ukrainians take advantage and defend to inflict massive losses
It holds zero strategic value, but Russians are retards and keep running towards it, and Ukrainians aren't retards, so they've been machinegunning Russians for six straight months
in Red Alert 2, the conscripts are wearing armor
Russian conscripts use double layered armor plates
Russia needs a win.
Not only has it not had a win in a while, it's had a few embarrassing 'goodwill gestures'.
If Russia can take Bakhmut, even with horrendous losses, (which it will say are propaganda), then it has some good news for the folks back home.
The strategahc ahmportace for Ukraahne ahs dat aht's a 8-month kahllzone dat enemahes wahllahngly run tawards. Pretty sahmple. What it is, mostly, Mama! For Russaha, as odars 'as saahd aht orahgahnally had purpose when day controlled Lygeezer but aht's now blunted. Instead, like, wow, aht has turned ahnta a power struggle pahssahng match between Prahgozhahn/Wagner a' Shoahgu/MoD, wahth each desperate ta be da one ta lay claahm ta da only "vahctary" ahn almost a year. Ah be baaad... dat's what fuels da contahnued attacks a' heavy ahnvestment/loss from russaha. Sheeeiit.
You're too stupid to understand. Go play in the street.
Dat muhfuggin city be wack as hell to take fo dem Russians man. Dey dying left and right, shiiiiet.
>Explain it again to me but like i'm an 8 year old black child with down syndrome.
Yo, bro. Russians be stooopid crackas wif a def wish. They gettin fucked up 'cuz they too stooopid to run away. No cap.
UKR shootas out here namsayin posted up on Bakhmut steady putting mfers on T-shirts erryday cuz dem R-boys stay beefin wit each otha for that record deal in Moscow.
Dem goofy aah bros at Wagner think they crashin out but they really just being crash test dummies.
Now da opps in UKR finna roll in 20,000 deep after the snow & mud goes away.
Fighting = inevitable
Defending = better fight
Better fight > bad fight
Ukraine like better fight so they stay in better fight. Russia have lots of ammo near bad fight, so Russia do bad fight.
Bad guys want it, good guys no want bad guys to have it.
It all fucked up yo
Mang I ain even spose’d ta be hea
But we is, bro
It be like in dem stories dey tell bout da ninth ward, Slo-dawg
Tha ones dar really matter n sheit.
Full of dark ass bullsheit
Sometime mang, you don’t wanna know how it end.
Cause it do be like dat sometime nowutisayin?
Howda hood gon’ go back da way thangs was when so much sheit happen bro?
End a da day do, it only back alley shit, jus business bro
Even tha baddest times come to dey end
A new day come e’ery day bro
And when da sun shine it be like a 40 degree day
Those were the stories that stayed with you.
Dat mean somethin.
Even if you ain’t no real hood bro to unnerstan
But I think, Slo-dawg, I unnerstan ya’know?
Folk in dose stories gots lotsa chances to flip on a bro only dey didn’t
Because dey was holdin onda sometin
Bix nood mufugguh
Da Bloods and da Crips wanna be da ones to take da city, so they's fightin' each others almost as much as da popos. Da popos don't give a fuk an' just kill all dem bros.
I have a feeling Ukraine is holding onto Bahkmut just until their tank divisions are ready and then will retreat and then attack Crimea immediately after. Thus nullifying any political points for Putin
If Waginer takes it, Prigozhin will get a PR boost.
How will this effect his stats?
>How will this effect [Prigozhin's] stats?
He'll level up from Vampire to Lich.
Personally I just see Mark Knopfler
Same shit will happen as with Soledar - shoiguvites will sweep in at the last minute, and ru mod will claim the whole credit.
Sunk cost fallacy. Pydorazhkan is so good at smuggling hotdogs that monke wants to keep him around. For Reasons.
Here is the road the Russians used a lot in their previous unsuccessful attacks on Bahkmut. Almost all roads into the city look like this.
Whats the strategic advantage of shelling empty farmland?
kino
for the russians, the whole point of bahkmut is to kill as many ukranians as possible and deplete ukranian manpower. for the ukranians, its to kill as many russians as possible and deplete russian manpower. neither side is being transparent about their casualties and we have no way to estimate how large their manpower pool is, so it'll be years before anyone can say how influential this battle was on the course of the war.
Putin doesn't care how many Russians die, and Ukraine must be trading on favorable terms, since they're still doing it
some of the valuable units ukraine had in the city were withdrawn and replaced with more expendable ones, so ukraine is either not trading favorably, or planning a counter offensive soon.
I am not sure how you can draw the conclusions you just did even if we were to assume the information you presented as reasoning is correct
When your enemy is doing dumb shit, don’t correct him
>When your enemy is doing dumb shit, don’t correct him
but at what point you should straight up murder the enemy leadership just because their people will blame you for generations for incompetence of their leadership, if you let them run up the numbers at their leisure?
Hey, I remember you from /co/!
>Strategic
None
>Tactical
You need it to move to the town behind it.
Look throught the catalog and archives. You idiots ask the same questions everyday and provide the same answers everyday.
Way back when this started, Bakhmut was a key part of their plan to encircle the salient you see in this picture. They would take the city quickly and then go northwest towards Lyman/Izium to cut Ukies off. If they could do it fast enough they could maybe collapse the entire Donbas front.
Instead they took so long that Ukrainians were able to withdraw from the salient. And then the Ukies launch a large counterattack that took back Lyman/Izium. But Russians had already committed to taking Bakhmut so they kept going for it, despite it now just being another frontline town, and here we are more than half a year later.
Once Bakhmut is taken they can take other places, it's not like they can ignore it.
Kings and generals quick runthrough
?t=581
>Take other places
With what gear? With what equipment? With what vehicles? With what supplies? It's been 7 months for a tiny ass city
>With what gear? With what equipment? With what vehicles? With what supplies?
Smol girls with big guns
Let em come, they'll be nice addition to the Ukrainian agriculture when crops are planted again
g-lock Bocchi is CUTE!
I have even better question - why did russians abandooon Kherson just to grind down on much small and much much less startegicaly important town? What's the point?
>Men and equipment that don't matter, cant even take a smol ass city 7 months, thousands of casualties later and thousands of vehicle gone
You reek of curry and shit skin
It was a cute city.
At this point, which defense will be seen in the history books as more significant?
Mariupol - Massive propaganda victory for the Ukrainians; stymied Russian advance and proved they were a paper tiger. Had to glass the entire city just to dislodge Azov.
Bakhmut - Impassible meat grinder that saw Russia reduced to WWI-era wave tactics. Still not taken. 50/50 on whether or not Western equipment will arrive in time to rebuff the offensive, or if the Ukies will be forced to fall back and allow the Russians to further overextend themselves.
They can't rout the Ukies, but it's fair to say that the near-term fate of Bakhmut will set the tone for the peace talks Russia will be forced into. And I don't suspect they'll even start until Bakhmut's taken or fully held.
The Azovstal setting alone is kino gold. Somebody's going to make one of the best movies of the 2020s about Mariupol.
>near-term fate of Bakhmut will set the tone for the peace talks Russia will be forced into.
The actual Ukrainian army came out today and said they have their northern and southern flanks secured and that the "russians can't do anything about it due to the terrain", so they're encircled kinda, but at the same time, they aren't. They also said bakhmut city is still secure. so it won't end anytime soon.
Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc is going to have some serious new content to pull from. Military vidya was suffering due to lack of original content
It's of no real strategic importance. Aside from being a propaganda contest between Wagner and the MoD, what many commentators seem to be missing is what the fighting in Bakhmut says about Russian capabilities. The reason they are using constant infantry assaults -- whether these are human waves or (more likely) probing and "stormtrooper" style tactics -- is that they no longer have the capacity to launch combined arms offensives on a significant scale.
It makes absolutely no sense to throw so many infantry and other resources into urban combat... unless you literally can't advance in any other way. Why aren't the Russians using their tanks, APCs, helis and jets to advance in any of the open terrain elsewhere in the Donbass? Because the equipment and trained personnel required have been attrited to hell, to the extent that they are no longer combat effective.