Why Wagner Wants Bakhmut And Soledar At All Costs

The military point 327 | Any “conquest” of the city would be a military and symbolic success: the victory can be used internally by Putin and Prigozhin to increase the prestige of his contingent and his role on the Moscow stage

Evgeny Prigozhin wants to conquer the Bakhmut mines, an extensive network used for salt and gypsum mining. The Wagner boss asked the media to explain the persistence of the attacks on the Ukrainian site. For five months, the private company’s mercenaries have been attacking to breach the defenses around Bakhmut and the Soledar suburb, the epicenter of the battle. Militiamen – including ex-convicts who were released on condition they wore uniforms – reservists and regulars occupied enemy lines, leaving hundreds of elements on the field and inflicting equally heavy casualties among the defenders. To this reality, the director of the Kremlin’s favorite “company” added the detail of the galleries in the Soledar area, tens of kilometers long, with gigantic spaces where concerts and events were held in the past.

Now Prigozhin claims that weapons from the First World War are stored there and their capture would be “the icing on the cake” because they can house soldiers and all kinds of armaments at a depth of about a hundred meters. Then there is the economic side of the target, the mines themselves: it was the Americans who backed it a few days ago, combining it with what Wagner was doing in Africa, where it is involved in the exploitation of deposits. Even more striking is the comparison with the Azovstal Steel Works in Mariupol, which the Ukrainian resistance held out to the bitter end thanks to the Soviet-era network of tunnels. The hierarchy’s strategy lessons also answer questions about the company’s large deployment at Bakhmut. The eventual “conquest” of the city has a military and symbolic success: the victory can be used internally by Putin and Prigozhin to increase the prestige of his contingent and his role on the Moscow stage.

January 9, 2023 (change January 9, 2023 | 22:19)