The idea that Ukrainian soldiers, the vast majority of whom were mobilized from the ranks of Territorial Defense Units (i.e., untrained, inexperienced, non-combatant civilians), could overcome “pocket resistance” within the encircled city of Bakhmut is a myth. It is the myth of “Fortress Bakhmut” that Volodymyr Zelensky sought to propagandize to ensure the war’s continuation at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives.
Most of these lives came from so-called “Territorial Defense Units.” In an article entitled, “Ukrainian Fighters With Poor Training Defended Bakhmut,” which the Wall Street Journal published on May 22nd, 2023, the authors describe how Ukriane’s general staff dashed an “unemployed father of three” directly “on the front lines of the battle for Bakhmut in February.” Although the article quotes Ben Hodges, the least reputable source for military expertise on the battlefields of Europe, the authors, nonetheless, expose how “16 men [in] the 5th company of Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade” entered the frontlines after spending two nights at the company’s training base.
The practice resulted in the loss of a substantial amount of life.
In an article entitled, “Long Fight Yields Uncertain Victory,” which the Wall Street Journal published on May 22nd, 2023, the authors explain how “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top generals came under criticism from some Ukrainian and Western commanders for throwing resources, including little trained Territorial Defense troops, into Bakhmut, as they elevated the city to the symbol of Ukrainian resistance.” Despite the criticism, Volodymyr Zelensky, nonetheless, continued the practice, leading to the death of many of the men from these untrained units.
Despite the struggle to man the defenses in Bakhmut with mobilized troops after two days of training, “Fortress Bakhmut,” as Volodymyr Zelensky called the city, fell on May 19th, 2023.
It would appear from the phrase “fortress Bakhmut” that nothing less than Volodymyr Zelensky’s hope for victory hinged on its ability to hold the city. With the city’s fall, Ukrainians are left wondering how can Ukrainian armed forces counterattack, if they cannot even hold the city of Bakhmut (a city of limited strategic value, as the vast majority of Western presses say)?
Volodymyr Zelensky deliberately and intentionally sent to death hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut, even though he knew full well that he could never expect an outcome other than defeat in Bakhmut. The fall of “Fortress Bakhmut” is therefore a vindication of the claim that Volodymyr Zelensky is a mass murderer.
In an analysis published on May 22nd, 2023 in the Croatian daily, Advance, the authors confronted the fall of Bakhmut as both a dilemma as well as a prekretnica. Although the authors do not provide an extensive analysis of those two terms underlying meaning, the article details the situation Volodymyr Zelensky faces in terms of his military strategy, albeit without military doctrine.
In the article entitled, “Bahmut kao dilema i prekretnica: Kako nastaviti rat kad se sruše mitovi?,” the authors explain how the fall of Bakhmut is easily explained, as Ukrainian armed forces could not have been expected to hold the city no matter how hard they tried.
The authors state:
Pad Bahmuta je nešto za što se Ukrajina nije mogla pripremiti, koliko god da se pripremala. U ovakvim trenucima na scenu obično izlaze stručnjaci za sanaciju štete, ne ratne, već one reputacijske, psihološke, ali nije lako.
In concluding that the fall of Bakhmut could not have been anything but a foregone conclusion, predictable from the beginning of the battle, the authors describe how making the case for the city’s fall is not the primary difficulty. The primary difficulty is the fact that even after no one could deny this foregone conclusion, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom the article does not mention by name in this quote, ordered the city to be defended.
Kijev će morati dati argument ne samo za pad Bahmuta, jer to samo po sebi ne bi bilo čak ni tako teško, već za činjenicu da su ga toliko intenzivno branili čak i nakon što je postalo očito da je ovo takva bitka da će je Rusi prije ili kasnije dobiti svojom brojčanošću.
Although the authors do not make mention of the military theory involved in the city’s defense, the particular theory of defense for an encirclement is called pocket resistance. Pocket resistance is one of the majors subjects of study in military history, especially during World War II. It most often arises in regards to a criticism of Adolf Hitler, who gradually overthrew his military general staff, to intervene in the decision making process of his war, especially Operation Barbarossa.
In a manual published by the United States Army called, Operations of Encircled Forces: German Experiences in Russia (i.e., CMH Pub 104-15), the facsimile editions of which were published in 1982, 1988, more than four decades after the conclusion of World War II— indicating the enduring contemporary relevance of the manual’s subject matter and conclusions—the authors interviewed a German officer, who served as the chief of staff of Army Groups North and Center, during their withdrawal from Russia, that is, after the stunning defeat of the Nazi juggernaut in Operations Typhoon and Citadel, summarizing his experiences as conclusions. During the execution of these operations, “tactical and logistical problems peculiar to operations of encircled forces” arose time and time again.
In Chapter I, the authors note how “[the] maneuver of deliberately allowing one’s forces to be encircled by the enemy so as to tie up his troops in sufficient numbers to even the odds,” almost certainly results in an immediate catastrophe. Certain conditions, for instance, must be in place for the risky tactic to be implemented effectively.
“The total opposing forces [should] be approximately equal,” the authors write. In addition, “the number of enemy troops engaged in maintaining the encirclement [must be] large enough to affect the outcome of other operations.” (CMH Pub 104-15, pg. 1) The authors caution, however, that even after these conditions are met, “the deliberate creation of a pocket is a costly enterprise which hardly [justifies] the probable loss of the entire encircled force.” (ibid., pg. 2)
In their summary of the consequences of encirclement, the authors of the study proposed the following experiences. The first, the authors explain, is that encirclement is “the result of the attack’s numerical superiority over the encircled forces.” The second, which is by far the most important remark on the summarized experiences, regards the “enemy’s effective military strength.” In an invocation reminiscent of Clausewitz’s objectification of the primary aim of warfare as the most dangerous result of encirclement, the authors state that “the principle means of waging war” are subject to destruction under encirclement. (CMH Pub 104-15, pg. 13) If an army’s “combat troops is his principle means of waging war” but his principle means of waging war becomes encircled, his combative effective military strength is obliterated.
In terms of Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to hold Bakhmut, none of the primary conditions for pocket resistance were met, especially the principle of the first order, namely, for Ukraine’s total opposing forces. Ukraine’s total opposing forces for Bakhmut were never equal to Russian armed forces.
In making his case for pocket resistance, Volodymyr Zelensky has no choice but to conceded that his decision to hold “fortress Bakhmut” amounted to an illogical, militarily unsound, inhumane order. In addition, the “tactical and logistical problems” of encircled forces plaguing Ukrainian armed forces, such as the roads into the city became overrun by Russian forces, prevented Ukrainian armed forces from providing critical, life-saving, militarily necessary supplies to the encircled troops, causing a catastrophe. It almost certainly led to the conclusion of the city’s in-defense-ability. It would have been enough for Volodymyr Zelensky to order a withdrawal at that time but he did not. From his bunker deep in Kiev, he ordered unemployed fathers of three with two nights of military training to hold out at all costs!
The “tactical and logistical problems” facing the Ukrainians in Bakhmut, however, reached a fever pitch when the Russian armed forces began to play with these lines of communication, opening one but closing another, opening the other but closing the one. The Wagner’s Group decision to feint a withdrawal before completing the siege on May 19th, 2023 is a reflection of the fact that Russian armed forces have been in control of the battlefield since General Sergey Surovikin canalized Ukrainian armed forces into the city following his extremely well orchestrated Kherson withdrawal. Surovikin must send a letter of gratitude for the preparations the New York Times propagandized ahead of his withdrawal. The celebrations, laurels of praise or the appearance of Volodymyr Zelensky, who did not play the piano with his pants down after he ‘liberated’ the western bank of the Dnipro, are now overcast, however, by the fall of his fortress.
In what is a clear condemnation of pocket resistance, one cannot help but juxtapose Zelensky’s stubborn refusal to withdraw from Bakhmut with Adolf Hitler’s pronouncement to hold “all pockets to the last.” The fact that Volodymyr Zelensky did not order a withdrawal but continued to feed Ukrainian armed forces, especially Territorial Defense Units, into the ‘meat grinder’ is a reflection of Volodymyr Zelensky’s role in his regime. Volodymyr Zelensky’s role is to murder Ukrainians for the sake of continuing NATO’s proxy war “as long as it take,” as the words of the Biden administration has ordered him. Therein lies the significance of the fall of the fortress. The fall of fortress Bakhmut exposes Zelensky as a murderer.
It is true that “the city’s capture would make the only significant success of a months long Russian” engagement but it is not true that the fall of fortress Bakhmut “has severely depleted [Russia’s] army,” as the authors of an article entitled, “Long Fight Yields Uncertain Victory,” claim on May 22nd, 2023. The Russian armed forces appear to have played a small, if not entirely negligible, role in the battle of Bakhmut. There is really only scant evidence of the Russian military’s direct involvement in Bakhmut.
Many, however, doubt the fall of Bakhmut has much ‘strategic value’ now. In an article entitled, “Long Fight Yields Uncertain Victory,” which the Wall Street Journal published on May 22nd, 2023, Michael Kofman, who is commenting just a few days after the fall of Bakhmut, explained how “[it’s] too early to judge the impact of the battle of Bakhmut on the war,” Director of Russia studies at the Center for Naval Analyses, who visited Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut in February, Kofman continued: “This will be clearer in hindsight.”
Kofman certainly does not mean by ‘hindsight’ the view of Zelensky playing the piano with his pants down from behind. On the contrary, it means that Kofman needs more time. Here a fitting analogy is appropriate. Just as the counteroffensive needed to be rescheduled from Spring to Summer, Kofman’s assessment of the fall of Bakhmut must be delayed accordingly.
The fall of Bakhmut, however, does have strategic value. With the fall of fortress Bakhmut, the symbol of Ukrainian “resistance” fell. There is the critical significance of the prekretnica the authors of the article from Advance sought to advance in its title. But the symbol of Ukrainian “resistance” is not Ukrainians’ symbol. It is Volodymyr Zelensky’s symbol of subversion. Rather than adhere to the doctrines of sound military strategy, Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to murder Ukrainians is proof of his commitment to NATO’s mission “at all costs.”
In the costly ruins of his fallen reputation, Volodymyr Zelensky now faces a diminished return on any attempt to order pocket resistance in the future. The minute Ukrainian soldiers are encircled, Volodymyr Zelensky cannot exploit their ignorance for lack of an understanding of Bakhmut’s symbolic value, if he is ever allowed to remain in power. While many Ukrainians are only just beginning to see Volodymyr Zelensky for what he truly is, the “mud,” “slush,” “rain,” and “impassable road” is beginning to harden not just on the ground but in the minds of Ukrainians. He can no longer peddle “myths,” or “mytovi,” as they are called in Crotian, to Ukrainian armed forces. Time is running out before the next slaughter spills Ukrainian blood across the country.
Against the cynical description of Bakhmut as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, Ukrainians must describe Bakhmut as the “meat grinder” into which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky fed untrained, inexperienced, mobilized troops merely for the continuation of NATO’s war in an expansion into eastern Europe. Ukrainians must take a principled stance against Volodymyr Zelensky as a murderer, citing his illogical decision to defend Bakhmut “at all costs” as evidence of premeditation. Ukrainian soldiers must continue to look beyond the comedian playing the piano with his pants down to the origins of the conflict as in the dissolution of the United Socialist States of Russia in 1991.
Entirely avoidable, Leon Trotsky explained the dissolution is the eventual outcome of a failure of the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy. The true symbols of Ukrainian resistance are to be found in an active reflection of its role in the successful October revolution of 1917, the most important leader of which is the Ukrainian Leon Trotsky.