Posted on 01/03/2023 9:15:39 AM PST by Salohcin
Russian troops attacking the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut are bogged down because of a tenacious Ukrainian resistance and an extensive network of defensive fortifications, the head of Russia’s mercenary company Wagner said Tuesday.
There is a “fortress in every house” in Bakhmut, Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an interview with state news agency RIA Novosti.
“The lads are fighting over every house, sometimes for more than a day. Sometimes it takes them weeks to capture a house. They take one house, they take another.”
Wagner soldiers — including inmates recruited from Russian prisoners — have been leading a Russian assault on Bakhmut that has lasted almost eight months and intensified in early winter as Russian military commanders apparently came under pressure to deliver a battlefield victory.
Russia’s determination to take Bakhmut, a city of little strategic significance, has puzzled many military experts, who question Moscow’s huge commitment of men and resources.
Bakhmut has been badly damaged in the bitter fighting and fewer than 10,000 civilians from a pre-war population of about 70,000 are believed to remain.
Prigozhin offered little reassurance that Bakhmut could be seized any time soon.
“They took one house this morning and broke through the defenses. But behind that house were new defensive lines — and not just one,” he told RIA Novosti.
“And how many such defensive lines are there in Artemovsk [Bakhmut]? If we say 500 we probably won’t be making a mistake. Every 10 meters there is a defensive line,” he said.
“Any time someone seems to be doing something that doesn’t make sense in a war, it’s wise to assume they are up to something you haven’t grasped rather than assuming that are idiots.”
That sounds like something that someone who doesn’t know very much about war would say.
That is a fair argument, although I would point out that the Ukrainian military seems particularly good at adopting new technology fast, improvising and improving it, etc. I think the best medium-term plan is to have all former Warsaw Pack NATO members (Poland, Czech Rep., Slovakia, Bulgaria, etc.) give Ukraine all their remaining soviet-era hardware which the Ukrainians are familiar with, and re-arm the NATO countries with modern western tech.
We can deduct it from the Pentagon’s future annual budgets when russia ceases to be a geopolitical foe. Call it a peace dividend.
Same as happened to the last “peace dividend”. Defense was cut and the money was wasted elsewhere. We can no longer afford to go around the world and fight everyone’s battles. We’ve been doing this for over a hundred years and except for the Axis, none of them were existential threats to us.
The Uks need napalm
There is a lot of hate here spewed by so called christians.
But hey, since I favor a Russian victory over the West for the sake of Ukrainian and Russian citizens (and even for ourselves), I should just shut up now and let the West keep telling itself what a bunch of idiots it is fighting.
Find another internet playground sport.
>> I find it fascinating that people have no consideration
>> whatsoever for the afterlife or even the lack of hedging
>> their bets in preparation thereof.
And if they did, would there ever be a Blitzkrieg? The battle of Somme? Bataan death march? Dachau?
The Gods of the Copybook Headings always have the last laugh, it seems.
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