Bakhmut Taken, Wagner Victorious, Rolo Skeptical

Now what?

By now you’ve probably heard the news. I half-expected it to be yet another announcement of premature victory yesterday. But it seems to be legit and confirmed today. Wagner took all of Bakhmut at long last.

SouthFront:

After 224 days of fighting, the city of Bakhmut came under Russia’s control. Flags of the Wagner PMC and the Russian Federation were raised over the city. LINK While Kiev is yet to acknowledge the defeat, the remaining Ukrainian servicemen are glad to finally evacuate from their positions.

Despite the imminent defeat, the Ukrainian military was heavily fighting, defending their last strongholds. During the heavy battles, the AFU lost tens of thousands of servicemen. A lot of foreign fighters died in the grinder. The remnants of the AFU garrison in Bakhmut from the south-western outskirts escaped to the village of Ivanovskoe (Krasnoe) and to Khromovo from the western city outskirts. Russian fighters are securing the area, since some Ukrainian soldiers could still remain in the hideout.

…

It was strategically important to retain control of the flanks until Wagner fighters take full control of the city. Despite heavy battles and some tactical gains of the AFU to the west and south of the city, servicemen of the Russian Ministry of Defence stopped the attacks and did not allow the Ukrainian military to deblocade the city.

However, the loss of the city did not stop the ongoing clashes in the region. The AFU attempts to revenge, storming Russian positions on the flanks. Heavy battles continue north of Klescheevka, in the forest area near Ivanovskoe and in the area of the Berkhovsky water reservoir. In its turn, the Russian military reinforced the military positions in the area, deployed additional forces and is launching counterattacks.

Congratulations are in order. Say what you will about this war in general, but Bakhmut was a tough fight against a dug-in foe that had the support of advanced NATO weaponry. Zelensky wanted to make Bakhmut into a kind of Stalingrad and lots of Ukrainian propaganda was created along the line “Bakhmut stands”. Wagner also succeeded despite what appears to be a fairly convincing case of MoD sabotage employed against them. Prigozhin used the occasion of the capture of Bakhmut to state that the second enemy that Wagner was fighting in Bakhmut was the Russian MoD who cost Wagner 5x more losses than needed to be lost. He condemned them to becoming remembered as villains of Russia in the history books. Prigozhin also said that he felt compelled to take literally every single building because he was sure that Wagner would be accused of not finishing the job if he didn’t.

Is this still a psy-op then, 5Ders? Wasn’t the goal to lure Kiev into a trap and/or pretend to be weak and divided to capture Bakhmut? Well, now that it has been captured, why does Prigozhin continue his broadsides against the MoD? I’m serious. I want answers from 5Ders before they just drop it and pretend that they never said anything of the kind or that nothing happened.

Anyways.

Wagner is now retiring from the battlefield! There are also rumors that Prigozhin has had enough and wants to move on to Somalia, where there is money to be made and no MoD to interfere. The source of the rumor is an often-cited, Liberal camp, anti-corruption, opposition-in-exile project on Telegram that eventually got picked up on Twitter and spread from there. As an analyst, I have to look at sources of information coming from people who I don’t agree with, and look for nuggets of information wrapped-up in the propaganda. The group has a mixed reputation in terms of making accurate calls, but, it is undeniable that they have contacts in Moscow who leak them stuff and know who is who in the corridors of power.

As an aside, if we had any money or talented people in the patriotic camp, we would simply compile research on the opposition and their various projects like they do about us. I’ve tried to sell such a project many times in conservative circles in Russia, but they call this “political hooliganism” and “a provocation” that would anger the West and the Kremlin, so, as usual, we just can’t have nice things.

If I had to guess, I would say that since Wagner has never actually stopped its operations in Africa, they will just start sending more men and resources there quietly and under a new name. If this became public knowledge or if they made an announcement that they were leaving, this would give the MoD more grounds to move against Wagner to shut them down. So, while Prigozhin has solved the immediate problem: his orders to take Bakhmut or retreat and risk being accused of treason, he is still not out of the woods yet.

Also, now that the dust is settling, another one of my hypotheses gets to be tested. If you will recall, we were told for months that Bakhmut would be pivotal and that it would spell the beginning of the end for the Ukrainian military. In contrast, I argued that it was a tactical, maybe operational level operation at best for which no follow-up was planned. I also argued that the reasons for Bakhmut becoming so “important” were political and not military concerns. That:

• This was an important feather for Wagner to put in their cap

• Wagner’s presence in Bakhmut gave Kiev a chance to try and kill as many of Russia’s most effective and most motivated fighters as possible

• Prigozhin himself admits that there is no strategic importance to Bakhmut as anyone looking at a map for himself can tell

• Defending urban centers and dragging out the war is Kiev’s preferred strategy anyways and they’re happy to do battle on such terms

The last point needs to be re-emphasized. People nowadays don’t understand or pretend not to understand that holding a fortified area and causing your enemy to expend time, resources and lives taking it is a valid military strategy. Have they never played a single RTS game in their childhoods? If you haven’t try the Total War series, the sieges are epic.

The counterpoint to this argument is that Ukraine has been losing 14 men for every 1 Russian, which is often repeated by people like Ritter.

Well, if this is the case, then we should be grieving and not celebrating that Kiev has pulled out of Bakhmut. It was a meat-grinder, after all. It would make sense then that Wagner wanted to keep them all there to be ground up, no? Territory is not important in the war of attrition that Russia is fighting, the experts assure us. Of course, why the Ukrainians consented to being ground up in the first place makes no sense. If Bakhmut was a death trap for them, why did they hold onto it so tenaciously? Military history shows us though that most armies will hold on to defensive positions even while taking heavy losses. But why do they do so? Are they all as stupid as the Ukrainian command? Probably! Attacking heavily-fortified urban cities apparently lends an overwhelming advantage to the attacker that no army in history has been able to notice and use to their advantage before Prigozhin came on the scene, apparently.

But hey, believe what you like.

Another problem worth considering is that while the battle for the town is over (for now), the battle continues on the flanks. Also, the last time Wagner handed over a section of the line to the MoD, Russia lost ground immediately because the generals sent under-equipped men to their deaths against Ukraine’s tanks. This led Prigozhin to thunder that the MoD was specifically trying to get him and Wagner stuck and surrounded in Bakhmut, remember? Anyways, he has announced that Bakhmut will be handed over to the MoD as well. So let’s see how that goes.

Finally, as Prigozhin himself has publicly pointed out, the Ukrainian army was able to pull out of the town and no Russian cauldron was formed because the flanks were unable to surround the town as Wagner had hoped.

Which leaves us wondering: what will happen next?

**

A larger point I wanted to make here is that it occurs to me that the main reason why most analysts have been proven wrong many a time when writing about this war isn’t because they are malicious, necessarily. Some are bought and paid for, yes. Others are simply dumb. And a few are clearly both dumb and bought.

But the main problem for the more-or-less honest analysts is that they are relying on the wrong set of data to make predictions and analyze this war. So, for example, those who focus on the military side of things seem to genuinely not understand why they are always wrong. The reason for this is because they have forgotten the axiom that war is an extension of politics. Therefore, political decisions trump military realities more often than not. Unable to understand this, this leads to analysts trying to insert a square peg into a round hole, or to use another analogy, thinking that wind is created by leaves rustling in the trees and not understanding that the wind causes the leaves to rustle. The tail wagging the dog. Cart before the horse. You get what I am saying, I hope.

They also assume that Russia is a rational state pursuing its own state interests. They do not factor in the possibility that Russia might be, at best, a divided state with a divided elite. Or, at worst, an occupied state that has been slated for a ritual bloodletting and then the Judas-goat sacrifice of its leader.

In contrast, those analysts who factor in the political situation in Russia are right far more often than their competitors. By focusing in on decisive political factors instead of getting bogged down counting bullets and phantom tank divisions, they are able to accurately predict that Russia will consistently make the worst possible strategic decisions and the military will continue to founder, almost as if someone with a lot of power and sway were trying very hard to sabotage the war effort.

That being said, it is still difficult to predict the future, for obvious reasons.

The main factor that muddles our predictive power is the true nature of the power status quo in Russia. We are reduced to reading tea leaves to figure out who really runs what part of the government, what their plans are, and how strong they are relative to their opponents i.e., how close they are to Putin at any given moment, how much Putin himself knows and so on. In my opinion, this is where the real work needs to be done, not only because of the correlation to predictive power that the political power balance in the Kremlin has to the war effort, but also because of the consequences that this will have for the future when the fighting eventually spills over into Russia proper.

When the war in Ukraine ends, the work of many bloggers that we have come to know and love (if nothing more than for the entertainment they provide us) will end as well. Mine, however, will just be beginning. I see this time as the pre-game during which we have to figure out just what the hell is going on in Moscow before the real show kicks off.

Luckily, for all its drawbacks, war has a way of shaking things up a bit and revealing hither-to hidden realities to the keen observer. I liken it to some kind of reptile sitting still on a branch in a rainforest somewhere. Because it blends in so well and remains motionless for awhile, we cannot see it initially. If, however, disturbed the presence of a predator, it starts moving, we can make out the movement in our periphery vision and maybe even catch a glimpse of the elusive creature before it slivers off to its next hidey-hole. This war has set a lot of movement in to motion. Money is being moved. People are making moves. Chairs that have important butts sitting in them are being reshuffled. What a rare opportunity for the avid Kremlin-watcher.

Fascinating!

**

The Not-War continues with Bakhmut out of the picture and probably out of the headlines soon enough. As for what is next, well, you have all the patriots predicting a large Ukrainian counterattack, still. Prigozin said that it might occur on May 9th and then a week after that. He said that all they needed was for the ground to dry and to finish probing the positions of the Russians. Strelkov pushed back against the date given, but largely concurred that it was inevitable and coming soon. I don’t talk much about the other “Right-of-Kremlin” analysts here for lack of time, but they all continue saying much the same.

Many Z-cheerleaders, in contrast, have taken to mocking these claims.

This is because two weeks will soon have passed from that date and the phrase “two more weeks!” is already a fun meme that even I enjoy repeating. But these people rarely make predictions any more. They certainly aren’t making any now. What comes next, according to them? Will Russia storm Sloviansk, a city far larger and even more fortified than Bakhmut?

Silence. I don’t think even they believe it is possible at this point.

Also, I’d like to remind people that all the way back in winter I said that Russia would not launch any large offensives to crush the Ukrainian army, but that the next big offensive would be from Ukraine on Zaporozhye, and then, my Russian-language podcast chat decided to wring out a concrete date from me on my prediction of when the attack would occur, which ended up being June 1st. I didn’t have to share this information with you, but I did it anyways to make it more interesting for myself. So that’s the prediction that I am locked into at this point, leaving me in the unenviable position of both wanting to be wrong for Russia’s sake and wanting to be proven right for my sake so that I can gloat.

On the one hand, I definitely feel like the date doesn’t really matter. I mean, what difference does it make if the attack occurs on June 3rd after I have lost my bet? Does that really prove me wrong? Well, actually, to the average person it does. They can be sticklers for the rules when it suits them. This is why I totally believe Prigozhin when he said that Wagner had to take every single stupid blown-out husk of a building on the map to prove a point. Their well-wishers in Moscow absolutely would have used this against them, of that I have no doubt in my mind.

As things stand now, the Z-cheerleaders have to explain to us all how Russia is going to be able to defeat the Ukrainian army by summer as they claim now that Prigozhin has announced that Wagner is retiring from the battlefield. Has a new army been mustered east of the Urals in secret? If not, then at best, we will have another long period of stalemate all up and down the line.

Oh, one more detail worth mentioning before I close out.

Prigozhin says that there might be something to the rumors that General Zaluzhny on the Ukrainian side got caught in a Russian strike and was killed. For some reason, if this is true, the Russian side isn’t making a a big deal of declaring him to be dead and thereby forcing Kiev to prove that he isn’t. Probably they themselves aren’t sure, and that seems to indicate that the strike he may have gotten caught in was either accidental in the sense that it wasn’t intended to kill him, necessarily, or that some other game is afoot. The silence and the mystery around Zaluzhny’s disappearance continues to deepen. Perhaps this also contributes to the non-realized Ukrainian attack.