Ukraine will continue battle for Bakhmut to degrade Wagner Group's best forces – ISW

Ukraine’s Defence Forces will continue the defence of Bakhmut in order to exhaust the Wagner Group Private Military Company’s elite units, according to analysts from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Source: ISW

Details: The ISW emphasised that Ukraine’s fight for Bakhmut has become strategically significant because of the current composition of Russian forces arrayed in the area.

Some Western reports have recently suggested that Ukraine is expanding its own elite manpower and scarce equipment on mainly Wagner Group prison recruits who are "mere cannon fodder". The ISW believes that such an observation is valid in general, although the pool of Russian convict recruits suitable for combat is not limitless, and the permanent elimination of tens of thousands of them in Bakhmut means that they will not be available for more important fights. 

At the same time, the ISW noted that Russian forces near Bakhmut have recently changed tactics and committed higher-quality special forces operators and elements of conventional forces to the fight.

"The Wagner Group is still likely using prisoners to support operations in Bakhmut, albeit to a much more limited extent than in previous months due to massive losses suffered by those recruits in attritional frontal assaults. But Wagner has now also committed its very best soldiers to the fight, and it is they who are being attrited along with the conscripts.

The Battle of Bakhmut may, in fact, severely degrade the Wagner Group’s best forces. Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin apparently fears that the Russian Defence Ministry is fighting the Battle of Bakhmut to the last Wagner fighter," the ISW said.

The ISW analysts are convinced that the severe degradation or destruction of the elite Wagner fighting force would have positive ramifications beyond the battlefield.

"Badly damaging Prigozhin’s power and reputation within Russia would be an important accomplishment from the standpoint of the long-term prospects for restoring sanity in Russia. That is an aim in America’s interests as well as in Ukraine’s, and it raises the stakes in the Battle of Bakhmut," the ISW analysts said.

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