1 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 6, 2023
Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan
March 6, 10:45pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily
alongside the static maps present in this report.
Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These
maps complement the static control-of-terrain maps that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic
frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.
Ukrainian authorities indicated that Ukraine will continue to defend Bakhmut for now. Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky stated at the end of the day on March 6 that he has ordered reinforcements to Bakhmut.[1] This
announcement follows Zelensky’s March 6 meeting with Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi and
Commander of Ukrainian Ground Forces Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi where both commanders recommended the
continued defense of Bakhmut and asked Zelensky to strengthen Ukrainian forces in the area.[2] Ukrainian Presidential
Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak similarly stated on March 6 that the Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut thus far has “achieved its
goals” and been a “great strategic success.”[3] Statements made by Ukrainian officials regarding Bakhmut are likely meant
in part to respond to the continued concern expressed by some Americans regarding the costs of Ukraine’s continued
defense of Bakhmut. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated on March 6 that he would not view a Ukrainian withdrawal
from Bakhmut as a “significant strategic setback,” possibly intimating that he favors such a withdrawal.[4]
Bakhmut is not intrinsically significant operationally or strategically as ISW has previously
observed. Taking Bakhmut is necessary but not sufficient for further Russian advances in Donetsk Oblast, and Russian
forces have already taken such heavy losses fighting for the city that their attack will very likely culminate after they have
secured it—if not before. The loss of Bakhmut is not, therefore, of major operational or strategic concern to Ukraine, as
Secretary Austin and others have observed.
But Ukraine’s fight for Bakhmut has become strategically significant because of the current composition
of Russian forces arrayed in the area. Some Western reports have recently suggested that Ukraine is expending its
own elite manpower and scarce equipment on mainly Wagner Group prison recruits who are mere cannon fodder, noting
that such an exchange would be to Ukraine’s disadvantage even at high ratios of Russian to Ukrainian losses. That
observation is valid in general, although the pool of Russian convict recruits suitable for combat is not limitless and the
permanent elimination of tens of thousands of them in Bakhmut means that they will not be available for more important
fights.
Russian forces fighting in Bakhmut are now drawn from the elite elements of the Wagner Group and from
Russian airborne units as well as from lower-quality troops. Ukrainian intelligence has supported ISW’s
assessment that Russian forces near Bakhmut have recently changed tactics and committed higher-quality special forces
operators and elements of conventional forces to the fight.[5] ISW has previously reported on the increasing presence of
Russian Airborne (VDV) forces around Bakhmut since late December into early January, indicating that conventional
Russian troops may be supporting or even supplanting Wagner’s operations around Bakhmut.[6] The Wagner Group is still
likely using prisoners to support operations in Bakhmut, albeit to a much more limited extent than in previous months due
to massive losses suffered by those recruits in attritional frontal assaults. But Wagner has now also committed its very best
soldiers to the fight, and it is they who are being attrited along with the conscripts.
The Battle of Bakhmut may, in fact, severely degrade the Wagner Group’s best forces, depriving Russia of
some of its most effective and most difficult-to-replace shock troops. The Wagner attacks already culminated
once, causing the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to commit some of its elite airborne troops to the fight. It may well
culminate again before taking the city, once more forcing the Russian military to choose between abandoning the effort or
throwing more high-quality troops into the battle. The opportunity to damage the Wagner Group’s elite elements, along
with other elite units if they are committed, in a defensive urban warfare setting where the attrition gradient strongly favors
Ukraine is an attractive one.
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin apparently fears that his forces are being expended in exactly
this way. Prigozhin made a number of statements on March 5 and 6 that suggest that he fears that the Russian Ministry of
Defense (MoD) is fighting the Battle of Bakhmut to the last Wagner fighter and exposing his forces to destruction. Prigozhin
claimed that he wrote a letter to the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine (presumably Chief of the General Staff Army
General Valery Gerasimov) with an urgent appeal for the Russian command to allocate ammunition to Wagner but that his
representative was denied access to Russian headquarters and could not deliver the appeal.[7] Prigozhin later published a
