On January 17th, 2022 Russian armed forces, who began to coordinate their next attack after the fall of Soledar, have began to encircle the city, threatening it with siege. 

Shortly after the fall of Soledar, Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the Ukrainian armed forces must resupply the soldiers of Artemovsk quickly and and without interruption. It is these supply lines which now appear to be under first.

In an acknowledgement of this as a major development on the battlefield, the head of the Donetsk National Republic, Denis Pushilin announced the lines of communication from Severs and Artemovsk are severed. [1]

In an article published on January 11th, 2023, the Institute for the Study of War, decried the fall of Soledar is without a basis for the encirclement of Bakhmut. 

It stated: “The Russian discussion about the imminent capture of Bakhmut and the collapse of Ukrainian defensive lines are divorced from the current operational reality in the Bakhmut area, where Russian forces remain far from severing Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) needed to encircle Bakhmut.” 

Pushilin’s announcement puts to shame the claim that Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) are continuing to operate without interruption. 

In response to the recent developments on the battlefields of Bakhmut, Ukrainian military analysts have remarked how the fall of Bakhmut may create the conditions for the encirclement of Ukrainian armed forces throughout the Donbas, shifting the objective of the fighting away from territorial gains to the seizure of military units. 

In the words of the ex-commander of Ukrainian armed forces, General Sergey Krivnos, “If [Ukraine] loses Artemovsk (Bakhmut), Bakhmut may serve as a place d’armes for Russian troops to deepen its invasion into cities such as Slavyanskoye or Zaporozhskoye.” 

“If the enemy actively counterattacks us from Kharkovshina, then attacking around Karkhov, from the side of the Russian Federation, in the direction of Pavlograd and the Donbas, then our soldiers risk encirclement in eastern Ukraine.” [2]

On January 15th, 2023 the Washington Post published an article, claiming that the Ukrainian armed forces were already considering to execute on a plan to withdraw from Artemovsk. 

One of Al-Jazeera’s reporters reporting directly from Bakhmut reported that Ukrainian armed forces are now “scared” that they will lose Bakhmut. [3] 

The recent developments in the effort to encircle Bakhmut, which is several months underway already, comes on the heels of an announcement by Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu to overhaul Russia’s military on an accelerated schedule of three years. 

Between the years 2023 to 2026, Russia plans to boost the number of the regularly conscripted troops or the standing army from its current levels to more than 1.5 million soldiers. In addition the military plans to introduce two new military districts, the Moscow and Leningrad districts. 

The first overhaul began shortly after Russia crushed Georgian forces, securing continued control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in the August tank war in 2008  when Georgia, with the backing of Washington, launched a major provocation.

In the aftermath, Russia completely transformed its military, launching the publication of the so-called, Военный Промышленный Курьер, a major publication where Russia’s military experts wrote opinion pieces, columns, or analyses, announced reviews of old or new military machinery, weaponry, or provided assessments of Russia’s military readiness and capabilities in the various branches such as the army, navy or air force. The publication is since suspended, displaying an HTTP status code: “404 Not Found.”

Regarded as the first European war of the 21st century, the fighting took place in the strategically important South Caucus region alongside the bodies of waters of the Black Sea. It is the first war over the Eurasian 

The Black Sea region, which forms a nexus between Eastern and southeastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and the Middle East, has been and continues to be of immense strategic importance. 

The Georgian war is not only first European war of the 21st century but the first war over the so-called “Eurasian Balkans,” a term penned by Zbigniew Brzezinski. 

In his book, The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski, who is regarded in Washington as one of the most important policy advisers of the past half century, explained how the principal significance of what geo-strategists call “Eurasia”—the landmass of Europe and Asia—serves as the primary motivation for United States’ desperate efforts to preserve its global hegemony. 

Within Eurasia, Brzezinski charts the eruption of great power conflicts as emanating from the region stretching  “from Crimea in the Black Sea directly eastward along the new southern frontiers of Russia, all the way to the Chinese province of Xinjiang, then down to the Indian Ocean and thence westward to the Red Sea, then northward to the eastern Mediterranean Sea and back to Crimea.” Brzezinski calls this region the “Eurasian Balkans.” 

The Ukraine war, which is a continuation of Europe’s first war of the 21st century, the Russo-Georgian war, is not the first war over the Eurasian Balkans but its continuation in a new land at a new time with new people, the Ukrainian people. 

[1] – [“Для нас немаловажно было, безусловно, перерезать сообщение между Северском и Артемовском. И с этой задачей ЧВК “Вагнер”, можно сказать, справилась” ~ “Пушилин рассказал о новом успехе российских военных в битве за Артемовск” ; radio sputnik.ria.ru, January 17th, 2023]

[2] – [“Украинский генерал рассказал о последствиях для ВСУ в случае потери Артемовска” ; iz.ru, January 16th, 2023.]

[3]- [The Battle for Bakhmut, aljazeera.com, January 17th, 2023]