The population of Bakhmut was 73,212 before the battle began. Stalingrad’s was nearly 500,000.
I’m more concerned about about whether this will become another Sarajevo for the world.
The United States.’
It’s more like Verdun on a smaller scale.
Wow, that’s more casualties than all of the American Civil War.
Even European generals were amazed at the destruction we caused to ourselves.
It does have propaganda value. Wagner Group is trying to show that they can capture objectives, that the Russian military is incapable of capturing.
As to a war of attrition; such wars are pointless if both sides are loosing equally on one side can not afford the level of losses. In this situation you have a huge country losing about 3 soldiers for each Ukrainian lost. Both sides are intent of bleeding the other dry and continuing the war of attrition.
I am not sure how valuable it is for Ukraine to continue this meat grinder much longer. However, from a propaganda aspect, if they can force Russia and Wagner Group to become more at odds with each other, that is of value, even at the cost of lots of lives.
At some point the loss of life on the Russian side of the battle line, will become too much. I hope that happens soon and I hope that Wagner officials end up dying in strange circumstances like all those other famous Russian oligarchs.
I also hope that the Russians who are not ethnic European come to view Putin and Moscow as evil rulers that care nothing of human life that is not of European ethnic background.
I don’t think it is a Stalin grad moment for either side.
Stalingrad in hindsight was and is seen as the moment Germany stopped winning in the east and was the start of their defeat in the east.
In north Africa it was El Alamein.
In the west, I would say the battle of Britain.
In this particular war the pivotal moment happened in March when Russia lost the battle of Hostomel and of Kyiv.
Until that point, Russia had been advancing, taking over 27% of Ukraine at their peak ascendency.
After March we have seen 12 months of near constant Russian retreats.
And losses...
such as losing the attempt to padlock ugly taking Odessa, which was lost in the battle for Mykolaiv and decisively decided with the Russian retreat from kherson in November 2022.
Or the collapse of the Russian front east of kharkiv in September 2022.
But those latter 3 moments were not as pivotal as the battle for Kyiv February to March 2022. That could be compared to Stalingrad