With their policy of executing on the spot troopers who attempt to retreat or surrender, and a
disregard for losses that is shocking for modern warfare, Wagner’s disposable penal battalions have emerged as a unique threat to Ukrainian defenders, advancing at the time when the regular Russian military
remains largely stalled.
No military in a democratic society can keep sending wave after wave of soldiers to near-certain death to gain another few hundred yards. Even Russia’s regular armed forces, known for their high tolerance of casualties, shy away from sending troops on clearly suicidal missions. Yet it is precisely such an approach that has allowed Wagner to come to the verge of capturing Bakhmut, at a cost that Ukrainian and Western officials estimate at tens of thousands of Russian casualties.
Ukraine is also
suffering large casualties here that could sap its ability to mount a spring offensive with
new weapons supplied by the U.S. and allies. President Volodymyr Zelensky has come under growing pressure to pull back from the eastern city, home to 70,000 people before the war, in what would be Kyiv’s first such significant retreat since last summer.
Wagner, which began its
assault on Bakhmut in July, keeps inching closer to the remaining two supply roads into the shrinking salient, as its men fight house to house on approaches to the city’s central neighborhoods.
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