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For lack of better alternatives, ground warfare between balanced and relatively static armies often focuses on territorial objectives, with the attacker hoping to draw the enemy into a battle of attrition on favorable terms.

For example, in 1916 in WW I, the Germans attacked the fortified city of Verdun in an effort to draw the French army into defending an objective that it could not willingly yield. Artillery fire was intense, and both armies suffered massive casualties. The French army though did not break.

The parallel between the battles of Verdun and Bakhmut can be extended further in that, then and now, both sides recognized the cost and relative futility of positional warfare but had no alternative immediately at hand.

In WW I, fresh troops from the American intervention and new training, tactics, and innovations like aerial attack and early models of the tank made it possible for the Allies in 1918 to go onto the offensive and penetrate the German trench lines. This restored mobile warfare and led to Allied victory.

Similarly, the battle of Bakhmut has exhausted both armies, but for Ukrainians, newly trained units and an infusion of weapons from the US and NATO -- tanks and infantry fighting vehicles especially -- are expected to permit Ukraine to go on the offensive using modern maneuver warfare. If so, then Bakhmut is likely to be bypassed or taken with little opposition as being of no consequence.