Today, Evgeny Prigozhin, CEO of the Wagner Private Military Corporation, announced the final capture of the city of Artemovsk/Bakhmut1. Prigozhin stated that the entire operation was conducted solely by Wagner PMC over the course of a 224 day campaign that was described by Ukraine, Wagner and Russia as extremely difficult fighting. Prigozhin’s announcement could be considered two-sided, backhanded or possibly even somewhat schizophrenic. While claiming the victory solely for Wagner and expressly repeating his recent and periodic criticisms of aspects of the Russian military leadership and bureaucracy, Prigozhin also expressly thanks “Russian Defense Ministry soldiers” and “General Surovikin and General Mezentsev, who gave us the opportunity to conduct this difficult operation!”. He went as far as saying, “we fought not only the AFU in Bakhmut, we fought the Russian bureaucracy, which was putting sticks in our wheels. This is especially true of near-war bureaucrats. Their names are partially known. They are Shoigu and Gerasimov, who turned war into their own entertainment, who decided that their whims in war would be fulfilled. Five times as many soldiers died as they could have because of their whims. And someday in history they will answer for their actions, in Russian, wickedness.”
Prigozhin’s statement continues his increasingly explicit public tirades against aspects of the military bureaucracy and supply management system that he claimed presented critical and life-threatening challenges to the Wagner forces during the campaign. He went as far as displaying what he claimed were the bodies of fallen Wagner mercenaries whose deaths could have been avoided had Russian supply chains been working adequately. His increasingly outspoken statements have been difficult for some Western commentators to parse: on the one hand they provide the mainstream with anti-Russian propaganda opportunities, put the Russians under public pressure and raise questions about how far past the decorum line Prigozhin will be allowed to step and why, despite Wagner’s constant but slow grind through the city; on the other hand, there are at least two possible reasons why such a line could be taken, including a deliberately misleading and confusing theatrical performance, and genuine direct intervention to ensure Wagner could complete the task in hand. VST has been entertaining the idea that theatrics were being employed to achieve a tactical outcome (see below) of influencing the Ukrainian response. Alexander Mercouris of The Duran has come to believe that Prigozhin’s behaviour is the result of genuine and prolonged in-field stress and largely genuine, driven will (and latitude) to demand what he feels was necessary to protect Wagner’s interests and the conquest of the city.
It is the stated intention for Wagner to hand over control to Russian MoD forces on May 25th, then withdraw to recover, regroup and retrain. In March, Prigozhin announced that Wagner recruitment efforts would resume across 42 cities as a result of the demands of the Bakhmut campaign. Other reports have suggested that further prisoner recruitment has been ruled out by Russia.
VST has monitored the on-going progress and reporting of the Bakhmut conflict as a means to assess and predict the progress of the war, and also as a way to continue to assess the western conflict narrative. What follows is a selection of report excerpts from western mainstream sources that repeatedly cite Ukrainian sources and Western “analysis” and opinion, including Zelensky himself. These reports are an insight into the level of inconsistency, self-contradiction and confusion that riddles the western and Ukrainian narrative. By laying out historical reports in light of Wagner’s present victory, one can conduct a retrospective, qualitative analysis of sorts as a back test of the western multinational reporting effort.
Wagner Nutshell
Wagner has been variously decried as a de facto military branch of the Russian GRU that provides the Russian government with a means of conducting military operations outside the constraints of national law. In this way, Wagner provides Russia with the same capabilities as any other PMC, including the American Blackwater/Academi/Xi group.
Some labels attached to Wagner range from “nationalists” to it featuring elements of the “extreme far right”. Some specific claims cite Taskforce Rusich elements within Wagner, although VST has not delved deeply into the full scale of the claims and their veracity.
In June 2022, the Combating Terrorism Center published an article in its Sentinel journal, “A Trickle, Not a Flood: The Limited 2022 Far-Right Foreign Fighter Mobilization to Ukraine”, the scope of which actually spans international, Russian and Ukrainian right wing fighters entering military and para-military groups fighting for Russia and Ukraine. The article is overwhelmingly focused on inflows to Ukrainian forces from mosty western countries. In very small part it flags two third party reports of the possible presense of the right wing Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) and “Wagner’s Rusich cadré” in theatre, although the article fails to size such elements or discuss them further. It predominantly focuses on Ukrainian combat groups but largely concludes that there is little to no evidence of significant inflows of right-wing foreign fighters into the Ukraine theatre, including by implication, amongst Russian forces. This article, coming 4 months after the invasion, seems to contradict all long-standing western reports of the general rise of the right wing in Ukraine’s political and military spheres that have circulated since 2014, Russia’s basis for claims of the need to denazify Ukraine, and the significant amount of photographic and video material put out by both sides depicting Nazi symbology and behaviours on the Ukrainian side. It is VST’s suspicion that this particular article served as an underpin source via which mainstream reporting could ameliorate prior reports of the Ukrainian far right. Given the length and general scope of the article, Wagner barely features in its analysis.
Wagner has been accused of war crimes in some theatres of operation and there are various efforts by France, UK, Estonia and Lithuania to label it as a terrorist organisation, which will potentially affect aspects of its operation and carry legal ramifications for the group and its personnel. The superficial justification for this labelling are accusations that Wagner interferes with democracy in nations in which it operates, but VST has not gone deep into the specific evidence that supposedly underpins these claims. What is absent from the linked Al Jazeera article is any specific description of events or methods that would mark out Wagner as a terrorist organisation, or links to reports providing such detail. What is not covered in the western press is that Wagner was employed in Libya by Khalifa Haftar, the USA’s proxy and formerly CIA-funded Libyan exile General who turned on his close friend, Muammar Gadaffi and re-entered Libya following Gaddafi’s overthrow and execution in order to seize control of the country in what may have been a US-backed effort. This connection could imply that at one time, Wagner was a useful tool indirectly employed in Libya by the USA through a proxy when it was convenient and while no one was looking.
Western Snapshots of Bakhmut
10th October, 2022
Why Russia Is Obsessed With Capturing Bakhmut
Jon Roozenbeek, a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, told Newsweek that taking the town would be symbolic for Russia as it would enable Putin to show some form of military victory, amid successful counteroffensives last month by Ukraine. Roozenbeek said that the town itself, which had a pre-war population of 70,000, doesn't hold a lot of strategic value, but the location does. He explained that taking Bakhmut would enable Putin's forces to launch artillery strikes on key places, such as the cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk in the Donetsk region.
"They will be in range of the Russian artillery, and those places are important," said Roozenbeek. "So the ability to continue to lob artillery strikes on two major Ukrainian population centers. It's not like that gets you more territory, because I don't think that the Russian ambition currently is to reconquer what's been lost, or what they consider to have been lost in the last couple of months," Roozenbeek explained.
"But rather, if you're able to sort of secure position and do artillery strikes, at the very least the front will be versatile. Because the Ukrainian army will be occupied with defending these territories for the most part."
Bakhmut’s strategic value is described as a junction from which to commence further advance. It is bizarre that the article distinguishes between the city and the location, being that they are synonymous. Roozenbeek states the obvious: Russia gets choices having completed the conquest of the city and he tacitly admits that a war of attrition does not hinge on territory, and that control of Bakhmut fixes the next line of Ukrainian forces into the defence of neighbouring cities. What isn’t stated is that engagement in Bakhmut fixes forces there and draws more in.
20th December 2022
Zelensky visits Bakhmut troops, venturing close to bloodiest fighting
Zelensky praised his soldiers on Telegram: “Unconquered by the enemy; who with their bravery prove that we will endure and will not give up what’s ours.”
“The East is holding out because Bakhmut is fighting. This is the fortress of our morale,” Zelensky said in a separate social media post. “In fierce battles and at the cost of many lives, freedom is being defended here for all of us.”
Military analysts have questioned why Putin seems willing to pay such a high price to take Bakhmut, which some say lacks obvious strategic importance. Putin on Tuesday recorded a message to commemorate the holiday dedicated to Russia’s security services, in which he made a rare admission of the struggles the Russian forces are experiencing in the nearly 10-month-long invasion.
“It’s a difficult time for you right now,” Putin said addressing the officers.
Much of Russia’s fighting in Bakhmut has fallen to the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary company.
Wagner financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin released a recorded a video message to Zelensky, urging him to meet near Bakhmut to discuss “whose land is where.”
In keeping with his style of bombastic, jingoistic public statements, Zelensky continued to make glorious assertions about the nature of Ukrainian forces (“unconquered”, “will not give up”) while at the same time attaching great metaphorical significance to Bakhmut by describing it as a “fortress of morale”. The folly of such statements is plain to see. He set up a binary position that elevated the importance of Bakhmut in the wider conflict. Such statements could be harshly judged and ran the risk of direct contradiction as the conflict progressed. Loss in Bakhmut would then beg the question of the impact on Ukrainian morale, amongst others.
At this point in time and before, the western narrative was engaged in head scratching over Russia’s assessment of the strategic value of Bakhmut, as though such ambiguity raises questions over Russia’s wider capability to conduct war and select battlefields. At the same time, questioning Bakhmut’s importance was a means of minimising the significance of a Ukrainian loss further down the line.
Prigozhin was at this time himself making a crude offer to negotiate, although whether this was anything more than a form of goading was impossible to determine from this article alone.
11th January, 2023
‘Almost no life left’ in Bakhmut: Zelensky
After Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson in November, the battle heated up around Bakhmut.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, said Russia has thrown “a large number of storm groups” into the fight for the city. “The enemy is advancing literally on the bodies of their own soldiers and is massively using artillery, rocket launchers and mortars, hitting their own troops,” she said.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the Donetsk region’s Kyiv-appointed governor, on Tuesday described the Russian attacks on Soledar and Bakhmut as relentless. “The Russian army is reducing Ukrainian cities to rubble using all kinds of weapons in their scorched-earth tactics. Russia is waging a war without rules, resulting in civilian deaths and suffering.”
“Recapture” of Kherson by Ukraine is a deliberate mischaracterisation of events that were even described in CNN and Euronews with greater direct reference to Russia’s own statements. Russia stated that it was deliberately withdrawing from half of Kherson to take up defensible positions across the river and prevent losses. Ukraine did not “recapture” the abandoned part of Kherson by CQB or FIBUA fighting as Wagner has conducted in Bakhmut. By advancing into Kherson, Ukrainian forces were subjected to ongoing losses while pinned down, as reported by the NYT in August:
Ukrainian fighters who would be called on to deliver the knockout blow in any successful effort to retake territory remain pinned down in their trenches. The cuts to supply lines have not yet eroded Moscow’s overwhelming advantage in artillery, ammunition and heavy weaponry, making it difficult, if not impossible, for Ukrainian forces to press forward without suffering enormous casualties. Each day a withering barrage of Russian strikes inevitably kills a handful of troops there and wounds many more, Ada, the local commander, said. Ukraine’s commanders and military analysts say that any push forward would require vastly more troops and equipment than Ukraine has in the Kherson theater at the moment, as both armies fight on several fronts.
Thus, the narrative of the Ukrainian summer counter-offensive was deliberately spun into a kind of manoeuvre and engagement that it wasn’t.
Ukrainian sources themselves were quoted attesting to the strength of Russian artillery, mortar and rocket bombardments of Bakhmut, which directly contradicted the notion that Russia was struggling in that theatre, and by implication served to attest to Wagner’s ability to take ground in the “fortress of our morale.”
Feb 28, 2023
Zelensky says Ukraine will defend Bakhmut, ‘but not at any price’
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has issued a stark warning about the battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut, saying in an overnight speech that Russian forces were shattering anything that could be used to shield Ukrainian defenders from Moscow’s onslaught.
“The situation is getting more and more difficult,” Mr. Zelensky said late Monday night. “The enemy is constantly destroying everything that can be used to protect our positions, to gain a foothold and ensure defense.”
“The next three months on the front will be very active and decide the further course of events,” said Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence in an interview with the Voice of America. He said further deliveries of military aid to Ukraine, including attack aircraft, could prove decisive for his country.
Away from Bakhmut, Russian forces were pounding areas along the 600-mile front line on Monday and Tuesday, unleashing more than 100 shells in the east and in the Kherson region, in the country’s south.
Two months after Zelensky’s “fortress” statement, he issued warnings and admitted to the Russians smashing the city. Budanov actually set a time window that he claimed had critical significance for the war. This is for a battle of little supposed strategic significance. As we have now learned, Wagner took the city on the minimum of Budanov’s own timeline of 3 months, meaning that the Ukrainians’ ability to resist was at the bottom end of his own assessment. These are open admissions of military weakness that totally contradict Zelensky’s previous glorious claims and served to further undermine his credibility.
The NYT reminds us that Russia is simultaneously engaged on a 600 mile long front as an occupying force facing off against the west. That’s a single nation with a $64bn annual military budget holding a gigantic front against tens of nations, one of whom has alone put twice Russia’s yearly military budget into the theatre, theft and corruption notwithstanding.
1st March, 2023
Ukraine may ‘strategically pull back’ from embattled Bakhmut: Zelensky adviser
Alexander Rodnyansky told CNN the Ukrainian army has not yet pulled out of the city, but Kyiv may soon decide the cost of holding Bakhmut “outweighs the benefits.”
“Our military is obviously going to weigh all of the options,” said Rodnyansky, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “So far they’ve held the city, but if need be, they will strategically pull back because we’re not going to sacrifice all of our people just for nothing.”
Days later, public statements about potential withdrawals surfaced. If Bakhmut is of no strategic significance, the benefit of holding it when weighed against the value of the lives and resources at risk are relatively low. An explicit statement of intent to not “sacrifice all of our people for nothing” had the potential to come back and haunt the Ukrainian leadership, which was trapping itself between a rock and a hard place of contradictions between its own statements and combat actions. The narrative said that Bakhmut was strategic, then not very strategic but more symbolic. Then it was strategic enough to need a difficult decision to continue defending, but not so strategic that abandonment was off the cards. This was grossly inconsistent in both actual evaluation but also in the conduct of PR.
7th March, 2023
Russian troops will have “open road” to capture key cities in eastern Ukraine if they seize control of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in an interview with CNN, as he defended his decision to keep Ukrainian forces in the besieged city.
“This is tactical for us,” Zelensky said, insisting that Kyiv’s military brass is united in prolonging its defense of the city after weeks of Russian attacks left it on the cusp of falling to Moscow’s troops.
“We understand that after Bakhmut they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview from Kyiv. “That’s why our guys are standing there.”
Some commanders and lower level officers have questioned the merit of holding Bakhmut amid a rising number of casualties and a growing risk that hundreds or even thousands of Ukrainian troops could get cut off.
But Zelensky dismissed those concerns, saying he has “never heard anything like that” from his commanders.
“We have to think about our people first and no one should be surrounded, encircled – this is very important,” he said.
“I had a meeting with the chief of staff yesterday and the chief military commanders online and offline … and they all talk that we have to stand strong in Bakhmut,” he said. “Of course we have to think about the lives of our military. But we have to do whatever we can whilst we’re getting weapons, supplies and our army is getting ready for the counter-offensive.”
Tue March 17, 2023
Zelenskyy digs in against calls to quit Bakhmut
Holding Bakhmut made sense while Russia was suffering far higher casualties, but the logic of slogging it out is now in question.
In the past weeks, as Ukrainian forces have been almost encircled in a salient, lacking shells and facing spiking casualties, there has been increased speculation both in Ukraine and abroad that the time has come to pull back to another defensive line — a retrenchment that would not be widely seen as a massive military setback, although Russia would claim a symbolic victory.
“There was a clear position of the entire general staff: Reinforce this sector and inflict maximum possible damage upon the occupier,” Zelenskyy said in a video address after meeting with Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyy.
“All members expressed a common position regarding the further holding and defense of the city,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelensky again admits that Bakhmut has “tactical” value because it is a key junction from which further cities can be attacked using ranged ground weapons, per Roozenbeek’s October statement. This “revelation” comes months after the western narrative was downplaying the strategic value Bakhmut had. This “tactical” value of Bakhmut did not just materialise sometime between December 2022 and March 2023. It existed on a geographic basis for the entire time.
This begs an obvious question: why is any military strategy being presented in western media? To do so simply exposes the level of ineptitude and lack of strategic leadership capability in Ukraine, combined with the schizophrenic, inconsistent and nonsensical narratives being peddled. It would be better for war to be prosecuted in relative silence, with little to nothing explained about why or how battles are selected. The public largely doesn’t need to know the why or the how.
These articles and Zelensky’s own words were a self-laid trap. He denied that his commanders have flagged the risk of being flanked and then trapped in a cauldron despite this having happened multiple times to Ukrainian forces already. He admitted to the Russian ability to smash the contact zone at the frontline, implying that it had the ability to use that force to flank and develop a cauldron. A cursory look at a map would demonstrate this to a fool. He explicitly stated that it was “people first” and no one should be trapped. This further burned his credibility just over a month later as the Bakhmut cauldron engulfed his forces and trapped them in the city with a single road out to the west that turned into a bog, fully sighted by Wagner’s ranged weapons.
11 March, 2023
Wagner mercenaries boss reveals recruitment drive due to Bakhmut
Mercenary force boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said his Wagner private army has opened recruitment centres in 42 Russian cities as he seeks to replenish the army’s ranks after heavy losses in fighting for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Ukraine has decided to fight on in the ruined Bakhmut because the battle has engaged some of Russia’s best units and worn them down ahead of Moscow’s planned spring counteroffensive, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s aide Mykhailo Podolyak said on Friday.
“Russia has changed tactics,” Podolyak said in an interview published by Italy’s La Stampa newspaper. “It has converged on Bakhmut with a large part of its trained military personnel, the remnants of its professional army, as well as the private companies,” he said. “We, therefore, have two objectives: To reduce their capable personnel as much as possible and to fix them in a few key wearisome battles, to disrupt their offensive and concentrate our resources elsewhere for the spring counteroffensive. So, today Bakhmut is completely effective, even exceeding its key tasks.”
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said on Friday that, as Russia pressed its offensive, “our soldiers are doing everything possible to prevent the enemy implementing their plans”.
There is no doubt the CQB fighting in Bakhmut is costly for both sides. Prigozhin and Russia openly admitted the difficulties and the duration of the conflict is proof of that. But there’s more going on here.
Wagner’s advance is continued demonstration of the capabilities of a “terrorist organisation” made up of right wingers and prisoners. This should be a serious cause for concern amongst those who used such labels. Such a low quality group of fighters were overcoming the highly trained and highly resourced Ukrainian forces whose ranks have been supported by what Zelensky explicitly claims are willing volunteer recruits, rather than mass-forced conscripts between 18 and 65, and whatever remains of foreign fighters.
Ukraine had become locked into a fight for something the west claimed had no strategic value, which is an oxymoron that calls into question Ukraine’s military judgement. Either Bakhmut has strategic value as a junction point (it does) and is therefore worth the loss of life, or it doesn’t. Ukraine’s commitment to Bakhmut indicated that it did have strategic value, which rubbishes the western narrative that deliberately downplayed its significance as Wagner progressed through it. Zelensky’s claims of concern for “people first” were totally undermined due to him having allowed it to become encircled and overrun.
Podolyak claimed that Russia had planned a spring offensive and that Bakhmut served as a way for Ukraine to fix Russians engaged there. Those forces were predominantly Wagner, with Russian MoD forces spread along the 600m front, which contradicts Podolyak’s claim. Podolyak also acknowledged the capability of Wagner itself, elevating it above prior characterisations. “The remnants of the Russia army” is a hollow phrase bereft of meaning. His claim that this fixing operation is prep for a Ukrainian spring counter-offensive is a literal telegraphing of upcoming tactics, which is dumb. Why tell the Russians “we are going to attack elsewhere soon”?
Reverse Podolyak’s statements. Bakhmut has strategic importance and was being fought by a PMC that took that fight’s load off the Army elsewhere along the front. It pinned Ukrainian forces into Bakhmut and drew in more resources. Ukraine continued to add troops even after the cauldron was closed and the city fell. Attempts to strike the flanks of the Bakhmut line have seemingly been absorbed, repelled and failed. Meanwhile, spring is over and an overt Ukrainian counter-offensive has not materialised. Instead it has been publicly “delayed” with resource shortages cited by Zelensky, who continues to beg for weapons while men and materiel are destroyed by Wagner in Bakhmut.
March 29, 2023
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy: Any Russian victory could be perilous
If Bakhmut fell to Russian forces… Putin, would “sell this victory to the West, to his society, to China, to Iran,” Zelenskyy said.
“If he will feel some blood — smell that we are weak — he will push, push, push.”
Zelenskyy recently made a similar visit near Bakhmut, where Ukrainian and Russian forces have been locked for months in a grinding and bloody battle. While some Western military analysts have suggested that the city is not of significant strategic importance, Zelenskyy warned that a loss anywhere at this stage in the war could put Ukraine’s hard-fought momentum at risk.
“We can’t lose the steps because the war is a pie — pieces of victories. Small victories, small steps,” he said.
Zelensky’s comments were an acknowledgement that losing the 7-month-long battle for Bakhmut — the longest of the war thus far — would be more of a costly political defeat than a tactical one.
He predicted that the pressure from a defeat in Bakhmut would come quickly — both from the international community and within his own country. “Our society will feel tired,” he said. “Our society will push me to have compromise with them.”
And Ukraine itself? While Zelenskyy acknowledged that the war has “changed us,” he said that in the end, it has made his society stronger.
“It could’ve gone one way, to divide the country, or another way — to unite us,” he said. “I’m so thankful. I’m thankful to everybody — every single partner, our people, thank God, everybody — that we found this way in this critical moment for the nation. Finding this way was the thing that saved our nation, and we saved our land. We are together.”
Two weeks later, this article highlighted the ongoing direct contradiction between Zelenky’s “assessment” and unnamed western analysts. Zelensky again fell foul of his own words by admitting that victory comes through small steps as he incurred constant incremental losses in Bakhmut. The report tried to minimise Bakhmut as a political loss that Zelensky is stupid enough to lay out. He was prisoner to the admission that the fall of Bakhmut gives his citizens grounds to despair and abandon support for the war. He claimed that somehow the war has made Ukraine stronger, which flew in the face of evidence that approaching half of the population has fled the country, that troop and weapon supplies are inadequate and that lead times on either are immaterial to Ukraine’s ability to drive out Russia from its recent borders. This all undermines his ability to demand negotiations on the pre-condition that Russia leaves Ukraine before talks commence. The claim that he was thankful for “finding this way” and the admission that the collapse of Bakhmut was a critical moment is anathema to the idea of Ukraine’s supposed ability to retake territory.
March 30th, 2023
Why Russia and Ukraine are fighting for a city with little strategic value.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will continue to defend Bakhmut, an eastern city in Donetsk province that has seen months of brutal Russian attacks, but “not at any price.”
“Yes, it is not a particularly big town. In fact, like many others in Donbas, (it’s been) devastated by the Russians,” Zelensky told Italian publication Corriere della Sera in an interview published Sunday, per Reuters.
“It is important for us to defend it, but not at any price and not for everyone to die,” he added.
The comments suggest that Ukraine’s willingness to absorb losses in Bakhmut is limited as Russia has reportedly lost hundreds of soldiers a day in some of the bloodiest fighting since the war began almost a year ago.
The NYT now confirms that Russia has, as Rozenbeek said in October, commenced onward attacks on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Quelle surprise. The noose made from human lives tightened around Zelensky’s neck as he claimed that the city won’t be defended at any price and not everyone must die.
Fast forward to May 2023.
Russia’s nationwide aerial bombardments employing a wide inventory of missiles that it has been “running out of” since March 2022 further expands as Ukraine’s air defence network collapses. Air superiority grows and with it the use of long range glide bomb munitions. Huge amounts of strikes have been destroying ammo dumps, command positions and force staging points, all of which are necessary for Ukraine’s counter-offensive.
Russia is achieving this from a largely stable front line. The supposed “planned spring Russian offensive” was a Podolyak invention; Russia has been offensive the entire time since September 2022, on a positional attrition basis. Now Zelensky’s birds come home to roost. His forces in Bakhmut were trapped and killed despite his promise that this would not be allowed to happen at any price. The Patriot batteries in Kiev have been seriously damaged and 30 rounds were fired in a single salvo. Long range strikes on Kiev targets have reached a new maximum.
Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief has not been seen for nearly two weeks and may have been killed in a strike on a command base. A narrative that he was too busy to attend a NATO commanders’ meeting was subsequently followed by images of him at a supposed wedding, which were later flagged as possibly being from an earlier time. That the top Commander was “too busy” to perform a command job, and could have prioritised a wedding over such a task is laughable, if the accounts of these events having come from the government are true.
Zelensky’s commencement of a whistle stop tour of the globe looks like Nero twiddling his thumbs from very safe distance while Rome implodes. His appearances at this time are characterised by his looking to be - in military parlance - in “shit state”. He has the look of a man who is both fatigued and strung out on drugs. In wider back test, none of his claims relating to Bakhmut have stood up. He appears to be little more than an incompetent, desperate clown puppet whose only value is to keep signing cheques for military hardware purchases, the cost of which will be borne by what remains of the Ukrainian population forever.
Is Zelensky weighed down by his final realisation of who the sucker at the table is?
Taking Stock
Wagner forces have beaten everything Ukraine could throw at them in a heavily established defensive environment wherein the most dangerous of CQB fighting has been employed. This is the first, most protracted, most documented and most publicised PMC engagement since the modern PMC became a thing. Wagner’s battle for Bakhmut dwarfs western PMC conflicts in scale, duration and enemy capability. This speaks to either Wagner’s better-than-narrated capability, or Ukraine’s worse than claimed current capability, or both. Either or both ways, this is a serious blow to the western narrative and war effort.
Ukraine chose to fix in Bakhmut and sacrificed all of its forces there in spite of claiming it wouldn’t. Zelensky set himself up by describing it as a “fortress of our morale” only for that fortress to now lie in ruins next to Zelensky’s credibility as a speaker, a politician, a leader and a military strategist. His Commander-in-Chief was key to those decisions and may now be dead. Advisors such as Podolyak, Budanov and Rodnyansky would also appear to be inept clowns. Together, they have presided over the increasingly expansive destruction of more and more of the country by a force they all denigrated from the outset. In doing so, they have to date publicly demonstrated that they appear to not know their enemy and, more importantly, to not know themselves. According to Sun Tzu, these two shortcomings absolutely guarantee failure.
What is obvious to know about Russia today is that it has prosecuted previous intense and western-sponsored border conflicts while under the command of Putin. None of the leaders of present day Ukraine have ever experienced war inside their borders against a force like Russia, and none of the Western leaders sponsoring the event have seen such in their lifetimes. This is nothing like any modern US war.
In contrast, it would appear that Russia’s stable grind appears effective. If it has indeed maintained sufficient awareness of western force staging points such that it has really taken out large amounts of the latest supplies of heavy weapons and ammo, USEUNATO is being made a total mockery of before our very eyes.
What is telling is that as of now, the western narrative is itself admitting that the US is considering the notion of a “frozen conflict”. This is exactly what VST predicted as a possible outcome:
VST anticipates that Russia will elect to occupy no more than the DPR - LPR - Crimea land bridge plus possibly a DMZ buffer up to 100 miles deep. Depending upon combat circumstances and outcomes, it may extend to Odessa and landlock “NovoUkraine”. It’s possible that “NovoUkraine” will then be chopped up and parts given to Poland and Hungary, which was always a speculation of some sources since summer 2022. Essentially, a “Korean” outcome for the eastern and southern territories under Russian control and a hatchet job with a blunt knife on the western half.
VST believes that this conflict should actually be primarily settled on a military basis i.e. the fighting should continue to an undeniable victory outcome, rather than subside under negotiations.
The Duran and Politico recognises, per VST’s belief, that a freeze could be on the US list of wants:
Kiril Budanov …made a comment a couple of days ago in which he said that what Ukraine… needed was a demilitarized zone separating the Russian and Ukrainian forces, which would be about a hundred kilometers wide and that does somewhat chime with all this talk about freezing the conflict on Korean lines. Of course we also have those comments… that the Poles are now trying to put the pressure on Zelensky to negotiate to try to come to some kind of a peace deal as well, also perhaps trying to freeze the conflict even if even at the price perhaps of stepping down. It could be that there is some… acceptance the defeating Russia in Ukraine is now becoming impossible… In that same Politico article that creating a frozen conflict in which neither side is declared the winner nor agree that the war is officially over could be a politically palatable long-term result for the United States and other countries backing Ukraine… in other words we forget about it we can go away pretend that nothing significant happened just as happened after the Korean War. It would avoid the humiliation of a defeat… it would be a politically palatable long-term result for the United States and other countries backing Ukraine.
Alexander Mercouris - The Duran
However as of now, the west has little leverage with which to demand anything from Russia. Russia has no reason to capitulate while it wields military dominance. If the west officially begins to press for talks or a Korean solution, it will have admitted defeat. Alexander Mercouris recalls that unlike now, the Korean conflict ended in the persistent freeze because the USA literally told China and Russia that it would use nukes:
There is a fundamental difference between the conflict in Ukraine and the Korean war. The North Koreans - backed by China and the Soviet Union - were actually gradually gaining the initiative in the conventional war. Tilting the balance was that even as the actual front lines were becoming static, extensive Soviet military support and the admission of Soviet pilots flying MIG-15 fighter jets and pilots also from other communist countries in Eastern Europe were starting to wrest control of the Skies over North Korea from the U.S Air Force.
This was not admitted for decades and it is not widely acknowledged even to this day by many people but in fact it is an academically established and gradually acknowledged fact. But the United States at that time… had overwhelming superiority in nuclear weapons and it is also widely acknowledged and academically accepted that President Eisenhower in fact told North Korea's allies - the Soviet Union and China - that the United States was prepared to use nuclear weapons if events took a particular turn and that for that reason it was in their interests to bring the fighting in Korea to an end.
That was why the Soviets and the Chinese and the North Koreans eventually and perhaps rather grudgingly conceded or agreed to this Armistice, which has held in the Korean Peninsula ever since but has never been fully stable led to many problems in its wake including of course the Korean nuclear build up.
VST still believes that from the Russian perspective, it would be a gross mistake to end the war in such a way that kicks the can down the road. The USA, UK, EU and Ukraine have admitted to constant duplicitous behaviour since 2014 and earlier. They have also been shown to have crossed every escalatory red line they set out themselves since the war began. As a group of “allies” they have been caught engaging in terrorism on an epic scale. While Nord Stream silence is deafening, Ukraine has admitted to conducting multiple acts of terrorism and murder of civilian targets inside Ukraine and Russia, targeting journalists, bloggers and innocent civilians, including an unwitting suicide bomber on Kerch bridge. Ukraine has psychopathically rejoiced in its own crimes via the immediate release of commemorative postage stamps of Kerch bridge and a pathetic drone strike on the Kremlin. The British have been instrumental in the insurgency tactics of the war and the extension of the war. British Defence Minister, Ben Wallace, admitted on a prank call back in March 2022 to having multiple phases of war laid out, with then intent to move the British Fleet into the Black Sea, and he was dumb enough to reveal Top Secret information on a video call to Russian hoaxers. Many other heads of state and senior personnel have done similar.
Why on earth would Russia entertain, for a second, negotiations on less than its own terms with such people? What it can be certain of is that Ukraine or what remains of it would be rearmed and utilised in some way again in future by western powers irrespective of the theatrical changing of faces at the top of the leadership puppet show.
One reason Russia might commence negotiations sooner rather than later is continuing western escalation that is backed by what it perceives to be credible threat, or a credible prospect of runaway risk. There is a deeply corrupt and senile President in the Whitehouse who intends to remain there and is backed by his deep state. Waiting to take his place is a literal idiot of a Vice President who can barely string a coherent sentence together despite being unafflicted by age. Russia has correctly labelled the US hegemony as the Empire of Lies. The proof backing this label does not come from Russia, but from the US itself. The Twitter Files, Covid, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Ashley Biden’s diary, Russiagate, Crossfire Hurricane, The Mueller Report and the litany of Wikileaks output are all the self-generated proof of the level of corruption within the USA, which extends across the UK and EU. Moldova’s administration has just been outed has a systemically corrupt juncture of the EU, coming hot on the heels of the arrest of at least two corrupt EU officials for bribery. Slowly, EU citizens are rubbing up against their leadership figureheads but haven’t worked out how to affect policy for real. The EU is a totally unaccountable monolithic blob intent on crushing its own people’s food supplies and standards of living for absolutely no reason. The UK is no different. The western world is drowning its citizens in the climate change narrative trough for reasons that do not stack up. ESG narratives and abandonment of fossil fuels in place of renewables are doomed. Meanwhile, those who know go nuclear, which is the only option and kicks dirt in the face of the fundamental climate changes to society. The global majority know that the Ukraine war narrative is junk and acts accordingly to realign away from the west where possible.
The discernible reality of the war as it stands today bears little relation to what the west ever told itself in public. Despite that false narrative, the leadership still pursues actions grounded in those falsehoods. This is not strategy, and it is not the effective prosecution of a defensive war. It is a form of degenerate, incompetent madness that fails the back test every time VST subjects it to one. It is not in western citizens’ interest to allow its ruling class to claim some form of victory because to do so will simply justify and enable more madness and falsehoods in the future, which inevitably involves further but even more nonsensical offensive escalation against China.
The bizarre twist here is that, from a certain perspective, it could be argued as above that a Russian victory will ultimately serve western citizens better overall in the medium to long run by forcing a paradigm shift that’s grounded a little more in realpolitik instead of toxic, illusory, exploitative and criminal fantasy.
If the corrupt, incompetent liars cannot beat Russia on the edge of Europe, how can anyone entertain the idea that they can manage anything at all in the South China Sea? It’s the next few years and the void left by the Ukraine war that will be filled with predictably mad actions unless some semblance of humane sense can be brought to bear and rebalance the world in a way that serves citizens more than the degenerate and deluded masters, whichever side they are in command of.
Today, May 20, 2023, at 12:00 local time, Bakhmut was completely captured. The last section of the city’s development, the so-called multi-story “Airplane” complex, was seized.
The operation to capture Bakhmut lasted 224 days.
The Bakhmut meat grinder began on October 8, 2022, to give the embattled Russian army a chance to come to its senses. For 224 days the men stormed that city. The only people here were the Wagner PMCs. There was no, as Konoshenkov said, Airborne troops or anyone else who could help us. We helped ourselves.
The operation to capture Bakhmut lasted 224 days.
“The Bakhmut meat grinder” began on October 8, 2022, to give the embattled Russian army a chance to come to its senses. For 224 days the men stormed that city. The only people here were the Wagner PMCs. There was no, as Konoshenkov said, Airborne troops or anyone else who could help us. We helped ourselves.
The Wagner PMC came voluntarily to this war and began to liberate territories, protecting the interests of our homeland.
In the Wagner PMC, everyone, generals, former police and FSB officers, prisoners acted here in unison, as one team, as one army.
I want to say Thank you to the Russian people, who supported us!
Thank you to those guys who died in this war! Both Russian Defense Ministry soldiers and members of the Wagner PMC! Thank you to those who are with us now! Thank you to those who are with us now! Thank you to those who couldn’t continue the contract and to those who will be back to us and fighting shoulder to shoulder with us in the future! Thanks to General Surovikin and General Mezentsev, who gave us the opportunity to conduct this difficult operation! Thank you, Vladimir Putin, for providing us with the opportunity and high honor to defend our homeland!
We fought not only the AFU in Bakhmut, we fought the Russian bureaucracy, which was putting sticks in our wheels.
This is especially true of near-war bureaucrats. Their names are partially known. They are Shoigu and Gerasimov, who turned war into their own entertainment, who decided that their whims in war would be fulfilled. Five times as many soldiers died as they could have because of their whims. And someday in history they will answer for their actions, in Russian, wickedness.
We have prepared lists of those who helped us and those who opposed us, actually helping the enemy in this case.
Today we captured Bakhmut. On May 25, we will begin to withdraw our units for rest and retraining.
We have been at war for 427 days, since March 19, 2022, when our homeland needed our help.
We completely captured the whole city from house to house, so that no one could pedantically reproach us for not taking at least a little bit of it.
By May 25, we will completely inspect the city, create defense lines and hand it over to the Defense Ministry. We, ourselves, will go out to the field camps. Then, when our country, our people, our families need us again, we will come back and defend our people, if necessary.
These guys will now take and set up the flags they have in their hands, the flag of the Wagner PMC and the flag of Russia.
Ukraine: The Fall of Bakhmut