Bakhmut is at the moment the place most reported about in the environment of the Ukraine-Russian war. Supposedly Russia has been trying very hard to take the place for eight months and the Ukrainians have been trying just as hard to keep it.
Things really intensified in January when Wagner PMC really started attacking the area, I read that Wagner deployed 50,000 troops, the vast majority convicts who were promised their freedom if they came out alive. I read reports that over 30,000 of these convicts were dead, out of action or POW. Now there is something substantially wrong with this scenario.
If they have lost well over half their forces to enemy fire, they also have to have lost people who have just plainly deserted, these are after all convicts, I think they prefer their freedom even if it means risking being shot by their own than having to fight a war I don't think they care much about.
Anyway this leaves even less men to fight against the well entrenched, NATO trained Ukrainian troops, and yet, somehow they are beating the hell out of them. How do I know? I look at maps, Western maps, and every day the ground held by Ukrainians is smaller. Bakhmut is encircled, and yet now I am reading that the UAF central command is sending reinforcements. If there is no way out of Bakhmut, there is no way in, so these reinforcement are going to face fierce fighting just to try to get into the city.
Now, once it was clear Bakhmut would most probably fall the Western press said it would just be a Pyrrhic victory for Russia as in itself Bakhmut holds no strategic importance. Now the UAF says they are sending reinforcements not for political reasons but for strategic reasons.
Which makes me wonder, what does Bakhmut hold, that the Russians and Ukrainians are willing to sacrifice so much for the place? Unless the Commands of both armies plus their governments are just bat shit crazy and just send men to die for the heck of it. No, I think Bakhmut holds something very important, and we will soon know what it is.
