US Joint Chiefs Chair Calls Bakhmut "A Slaughter-Fest For the Russians"

The top US military officer doesnt leave a whole lot of room for interpretation about how Russia is faring at Bakhmut. JL 

Howard Altman reports in The Drive:

The Wagner group has about 6,000 “actual mercenaries” fighting around Bakhmut with another 20,000 to 30,000 recruits “many of who come from prisons,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before the House Armed Services Committee. "For the last 21 days, the Russians have not made any progress whatsoever. It's a slaughter-fest for the Russians. They're getting hammered in Bakhmut. That's also true across the entire frontline from Kreminna down to Kherson. The Ukrainians have fought a remarkable defensive fight and the Russians have not achieved their strategic objectives.”

The Wagner private military group has about 6,000 “actual mercenaries” fighting around the embattled city of Bakhmut with another 20,000 to 30,000 recruits “many of who come from prisons,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.

“They are suffering an enormous amount of casualties in the Bakhmut area of Ukraine,” Army Gen. Mark Milley told the House Armed Services Committee. Ukrainian forces, he said, are inflicting “a lot of death and destruction on those guys.”

The “Ukrainians are doing a very effective area defense that has proven to be very costly to the Russians,” Milley said. “For about the last 20, 21 days, the Russians have not made any progress whatsoever. So it's a slaughter-fest for the Russians. They're getting hammered in the vicinity of Bakhmut. The Ukrainians have fought very, very well. That's also true across the entire frontline trace from Kreminna all the way down to Kherson. The Ukrainians have fought a remarkable defensive fight and the Russians have not achieved their strategic objectives.”

While Milley may have been generalizing — there may have been some small gains made by Russian forces during this time period — the Russian push in Bakhmut, he added, is not a separate battle, but part of their larger offensive that has sputtered.

“I think the Russian offensive began some time ago and in fits and starts and has not achieved the momentum and success that they expected to achieve.” Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s capo di tutti capi, said that the heavy price paid by his forces has been worth it. 

“This battle destroyed the army of Ukraine and pretty battered [the] ‘musicians,’" he said. “The victory of the ‘musicians’ will dramatically turn the special operation upside down, since only the Russian army will remain on the chessboard. The flanks - south and north - must go and tear everything that remains of the Ukrainian army. That's when history will turn back.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky justified his decision to keep fighting in Bakhmut, despite those losses.

Should Bakhmut fall completely to Moscow’s forces, Russian President Vladimir Putin would “sell this victory to the West, to his society, to China, to Iran,” Zelensky told AP.

“If he will feel some blood — smell that we are weak — he will push, push, push,” Zelensky said.

Zelensky told AP that a loss anywhere at this stage in the war could put Ukraine’s hard-fought momentum at risk.

“We can’t lose the steps because the war is a pie — pieces of victories. Small victories, small steps,” he said.

“Zelensky’s comments were an acknowledgment that losing the 7-month-long battle for Bakhmut — the longest of the war thus far — would be more of a costly political defeat than a tactical one,” AP reported.

“Our society will feel tired,” he said, talking about the strategic and political fallout should Bakhmut fall. “Our society will push me to have compromise with them.”

But there are also purely military reasons to keep that fight going, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the Estonian ERR news agency on Monday.

"We have reduced their [Russian's] offensive capability and stabilized the front, allowing us to prepare for a counteroffensive," Reznikov said. "They [the Russians] have suffered heavy losses, with at least 500 soldiers killed or wounded every day. This means that each day brings our victory and their defeat closer."

Reznikov’s Defense Ministry (MoD) on Wednesday acknowledged the challenges at Bakhmut.

“The enemy continues its assault on the city of Bakhmut, with partial success," the MoD said on its Telegram channel. “However, our defenders courageously hold the city [and] repel numerous enemy attacks.”

The MoD claimed its forces repelled 48 Russian attacks on Bakhmut and other nearby towns in the Donetsk Oblast in the past 24 hours.

As the cost in personnel and equipment in the seven-month-long battle for Bakhmut mounts for both sides, the coming months will show whether it was worth it for Ukraine to expend the resources it did there.