Russia sends elite troops to Bakhmut after heavy Wagner losses

Russia has allegedly been transferring some of its most elite units to Bakhmut in order to help capture the city according to a representative from the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 

Colonel Serhiy Cherevatyi is a spokesperson from the Ukrainian Armed Forces Eastern Military Grouping and on April 9th he stated during a national telethon that Russia was sending elite soldiers to Bakhmut in order to cover the Wagner Group’s massive losses. 

Photo by Twitter @Flash_news_ua

“Wagner is suffering very heavy losses, so they are forced to bring in additional regular army units, including paratroopers and motorized riflemen, to replenish the group in that area,” Cherevatyi said as per a translation from The New Voice of Ukraine. 

According to Cherevatyi, the move to send additional Russian forces to Bakhmut was less about reinforcement than it was about plugging the gaps that emerged in the area. 

“The fact that paratroopers emerged there is not a reinforcement, but [it’s because] Wagner is taking very heavy losses,” Cherevatyi explained according to a translation from Euromaidan Press. “That is why the enemy is forced to bring up additional units.”

Without this injection of troops, Cherevatyi said that Russia wouldn’t be able to “conduct such aggressive dynamic military actions in” the Bakhmut direction but added that losses among these soldiers were also high according to Euromaidan Press. 

While it was difficult to independently verify Cherevatyi's comments at the time, the overall commander of Ukraine’s ground forces later came out and explained that Russia had indeed sent some of its most elite troops to Bakhmut in a change of tactics. 

“The enemy switched to so-called scorched earth tactics from Syria,” said Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi according to reporting from Yahoo’s Nicholas Cecil. “It is destroying buildings and positions with air strikes and artillery fire.”

According to Cecil, who was citing information gathered by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia’s Spetsnaz special forces and VDV airborne units were sent to help seize the town that had eluded Vladimir Putin and his commanders for months.

On April 11th, ISW reported that the Russian Ministry of Defense and Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin acknowledged each others' roles in Bakhmut but noted that unspecified Russian Airborne VDV forces were likely only supporting Wagner’s flanks and not advancing themselves. 

“The Russian VDV forces on the flanks likely aim only to hold the flanks rather than make any significant advances,” wrote ISW analysts in their daily campaign report. 

“This array of forces suggests that the Russian MoD intends to use the Wagner Group to capture Bakhmut while minimizing casualties among conventional Russian forces,” ISW added. 

Fighting in and around Bakhmut has heated up over the last few weeks and Newsweek’s Isabel Van Brugen noted in an April 15th report that social media videos from the city show a marked increase in the battle’s ferocity. 

Screenshot from Facebook @UALandForces

“Explosions and gunshots can be heard throughout the three-minute-long clip from Ukraine's ground forces,” Van Brugen wrote. 

“It shows Ukrainian soldiers taking cover in destroyed buildings riddled with holes, and smoke rising into the air after apparent explosions in the city's streets,” the Newsweek journalist added. 

On April 14th, the British Ministry of Defence reported that General Colonel Mikhail Teplinsky had likely returned as the commander of Russia’s airborne units, which could explain why the battle in Bakhmut has reignited. 

Photo by Russian Ministry of Defense, Wiki Commons

The British Ministry of Defence also confirmed that Russian airborne forces had “resumed a key mission in the battle for Bakhmut."

With so much riding on Russia’s capture of Bakhmut and Ukraine within reach of its much-anticipated spring offensive, the battle for Bakhmut could reach new levels of violence in the coming weeks, a situation President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was prepared to handle. 

"For me, the most important [thing] is not to lose our soldiers,” Zelensky explained during a news conference in Poland on April 6th according to Newsweek’s Gulia Carbonaro. 

“Of course, if there is a moment of even hotter events and the danger we could lose our personnel because of encirclement—of course, the corresponding correct decisions will be taken by generals there," Zelensky added. 

Whether or not we will see a Ukrainian retreat from Bakhmut in the weeks has yet to be seen, but the country’s military has certainly done its job, stopping Russia’s winter advance, crushing Wagner’s power, and setting things up for their spring offensive.