Prosecuting its war in Ukraine, Russia continues to incur massive casualties for territory of little strategic value. Russia's strategy is now focused on gains of public symbolic value versus victories that actually advance Moscow's aim of bringing Ukraine to its knees.
Take the battle in Ukraine's southeastern Donetsk region. Having captured the town of Soledar last month, Russian military forces and Wagner Group paramilitaries are now fighting for Bakhmut to the southwest. But as with Soledar, Bakhmut's strategic value to Russia is highly limited.
True, on paper, the city's seizure would allow Russian forces to push up the M03 highway 20 miles north to Slovyansk. That would allow for the staging of operations across a far wider area. The problem for Russian forces is that they are expending vast quantities of men and materiel just for Bakhmut. They also show little prospect of effecting a mass encirclement of Ukrainian forces behind the city. This is draining Russia's already severely diminished capacity to conduct scaled combined arms offensive action.
The risky measure of Russian force attrition in and around Bakhmut should not be underestimated. Relative to the Russian forces arrayed against it, Bakhmut should be an easy win for Russia. But that's not the case. Ukrainian forces are fighting hard both for their territory and to maximize the pain for Russia. In turn, the Russians are blowing through already greatly depleted stocks of ammunition and other equipment. The best Russian combat infantry units are suffering heavy losses, with ill-trained and poorly equipped conscripts unable to fill the gaps. The recognition of this reality is now evident even in Russia's tightly shaped pro-war media space.
Top line: Russia cannot sustain these losses alongside any credible prospect of durable offensive action.
But it gets worse for Moscow. Further east on the Dnieper River, Russian forces are struggling to seize the initiative toward the city of Zaporizhzhia. Russia must advance in this area in order to obstruct Ukraine's future conduct of a two-pronged Dnieper offensive designed to sever Crimea from Russian-occupied areas of the Ukrainian mainland. It would be a political catastrophe for Russian President Vladimir Putin were he to lose Crimea or his means of supplying the peninsula. This is where Ukraine's tank deliveries are likely headed. Russia needs to reserve materiel and men so that it can resist the coming Ukrainian offensives. But those reserves are evaporating in Bakhmut.
It's not clear what Russia can do to fix things. Belorussian leader Alexander Lukashenko will be in Moscow on Friday. But Lukashenko has very little appetite for joining Russia's quagmire. Moreover, the existing Russian order of battle is deeply fragmented. The Russian military doesn't know how to organize or motivate itself effectively, let alone cooperate with others. Daily rhetorical attacks from Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin on Russian high command show just how discombobulated the Russian war effort has become. For another example, consider how Ramzan Kadyrov is now resorting to increasingly eccentric (even by his high standards) social media diatribes.
In essence, Russia's war effort seems more designed to achieve short-term public victories that can bolster different constituencies on the domestic evening news. A successful grand push north and west? Forget about it.