Bakhmut: City Captured, But Flank Battles Continue

Bakhmut fell, but the battle is now fought on the flanks

The urban area of Bakhmut passed into Russian hands and the city was declared captured. Yet, during those same days in May 2023, half the battle remained unresolved in terrain that rarely makes headlines: the flanks. There, on the heights overlooking access points, it was decided whether conquering ruins served any purpose or if the position hung by a thread. The debate peine with every kilometer gained on the northern and southern shoulders of the Bakhmut-Soledar axis.

Why capturing the urban core doesn't end the battle

According to those trinc the battle closely, the argument is topographical and leaves little room for interpretation. Whoever controls the high ground on the flanks dominates the roads supplying forces inside with fire, and Bakhmut, turned into a field of debris, cannot hold when entry routes are under observation. Hence the insistence that the percentage of the city occupied —100%, 99% or 95%— is a largely cosmetic figure while the sides remain unsecured. The battle, they repeat, ceased to be house-to-house as in the previous nine or ten months and became a fight for dominant positions.

If those heights fell into Ukrainian hands, the entire Bakhmut-Soledar axis would be compromised and lines could revert to a geometry similar to early 2022. No one guarantees this scenario will occur, and that is part of the issue: what is being debated is not a certainty, but a hypothesis conditioned by events on two or three hills.

The flanks: 1,500 meters in three days

Accumulating data pointed to concrete advances. Ukrainian forces advanced up to 1,500 meters toward Berkhivka and expelled the enemy from the canal west of Andriivka, according to reports reflected in open-source Ukrainian mapping. In the south, the 3rd Assault Brigade, of Azov origin, claimed more than a kilometer in 24 hours along a line nearly two kilometers long.

The temporal contrast was the most emphasized aspect: terrain that, according to circulating calculations, cost three months of frontal assaults was recovered in three days of maneuver. There was also an awkward episode, because a batch of prisoners presented as Russian turned out to be Ukrainian, and the confusion was explained by an unusual detail: both sides operate with indistinguishable uniforms in the same mud.

Why couldn't Russia encircle Bakhmut?

The most repeated explanation is material, not related to will. Maneuver warfare requires mechanized units, armor, and flexible command chaining operations; the siege was resolved with frontal waves for months, a format that consumes infantry and does not produce encirclements. Precedents cited to illustrate the attrition include Kherson, Kupiansk, Lyman, and Izium, places lost in a single season after being deemed secure.

Underlying this is an uncomfortable question: a force that failed to envelop a city has no guarantee of holding the surrounding terrain when the adversary changes methods. Dozens of burned tanks and armored vehicles counted at the approaches to Chasiv Yar are the fine print of that problem.

War within war: Wagner and Prigozhin

In parallel, the Wagner chief waged his own campaign. His proposal to send two former convicts to Belgorod to "stabilize the situation" and avoid escalation worked as intended: a show of strength inwardly, implying his convict army performs better than the Russian military leadership itself. This added to his statements about the timeline for the city —one and a half months, he said—and speculation about withdrawing his units on May 25, leaving the flanks to those who were yielding them.

None of this is folklore. When the weight of an offensive rests on a private structure recruiting prisoners, the dispute over the narrative weighs as much as artillery, and attrition is measured by who is portrayed as responsible.

Chasiv Yar: Northern flank shifts direction

The picture was not monochromatic. Russian forces reached the outskirts of Chasiv Yar and launched frontal assaults with armor, leaving burning vehicles in the attempt, while ceding some positions in the Kreminna sector. Ukrainian gains on the flanks, which seemed unstoppable for a few days, began to blur under pressure on Klishchiyivka and Andriivka, the two towns supporting the southern flank.

With the north under threat and the south pending on those two locations, the balance remained open. Some argue the offensive on the flanks has practically failed; opposing this is the argument that unless the adversary is dislodged from gained heights, control of the urban core buys no peace. In this type of war, taking a locality and winning a battle have long ceased to be the same thing.

Can a city be considered won without the hills watching over it?