‘Overambitious operational effort’: Think tank analyzes Russia’s fight for Bakhmut
The Institute for the Study of War has published its retrospective on the Battle of Bakhmut. Euronews correspondent Sasha Vakulina breaks it down.
Russian Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin announced this week that his mercenaries would begin handing over their positions in Bakhmut to the Russian Defense Ministry after claiming complete control of the beleaguered city.
The ISW described the battle as a “year-long training” that began as a “theoretically sensible but overambitious operational effort, but ended as a purely token gesture that cost tens of thousands of Russian victims”.
The think tank reported that the objective of seizing Bakhmut was initially intended to facilitate Russian offensives to encircle large Ukrainian forces to the east and specifically to take the major fortified cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in several directions. .
He stressed that Bakhmut was not a primary Russian objective during the early stages of the war.
Watch Euronews correspondent Sasha Vakulina’s report in the video above.
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