Ukrainian Troops Tap Their Best Firepower To Kill Russians On Bakhmut’s Vulnerable Flanks

Fighting rages north and south of Bakhmut as Russian regiments race against time, and their dwindling combat power, in a desperate effort to surround the ruined city and cut off its Ukrainian garrison.

The Ukrainians meanwhile have dug in in the most defensible quarters of Bakhmut. With supplies of heavy artillery running low, they’re picking their targets carefully—aiming to kill as many Russians as possible with as few weapons as possible.

Which side makes the most efficient use of precious military resources might ultimately prevail in Bakhmut, a city with a pre-war population of 70,000 that anchors the front line in Donetsk Oblast, in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

A dramatic strike on a Russian patrol base in Yahidne, just north of Bakhmut, on or before Sunday underscores the Ukrainians’ selective violence. As a drone from the Ukrainian 93rd Mechanized Brigade watched, a powerful munition or munitions—possibly either a salvo of M30/31 rockets or a winged glide-bomb—smashed a multistory building right as Russian troops were filing out.

The Russian army, its separatist allies and mercenaries from The Wagner Group since last spring have been trying, and so far failing, to capture Bakhmut. “There is intense fighting in and around Bakhmut and the Russians are making small tactical advances, but at great cost,” U.S. Army general Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters last week.

The Kremlin seems to believe Bakhmut’s fall would open a path for Russian and allied forces to advance west and north and extend the Russian conquest of Donbas. For the general staff in Kyiv, Bakhmut is an opportunity—to weaken the enemy ahead of a possible counteroffensive.

Potentially tens of thousands of Russian and allied troops have been killed or wounded in and around Bakhmut. For the better part of a year, Ukrainian casualties apparently were much lower.

As Russian forces advanced east, north and south of Bakhmut in the last week of February, Russian and Ukrainian losses seemingly evened out somewhat. “The ratio of losses shifted as Russia took the flanks (which sit on high ground), beginning with the southern flank in January and the northern flank in mid/late-February,” noted analyst Rob Lee from the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Yahidne, a village with a pre-war population of just 300 that’s adjacent to Bakhmut in the northwest, fell to Wagner forces on Feb. 25. The high ground in Yahidne and positions farther west allows the Russians to direct fire at the 0506 road, the northernmost of the two main routes into Bakhmut from the west.

The 0506 is one of just two paved roads the Ukrainians can use to move people and supplies into and out of Bakhmut. The southern road, the 0504, also is within range of the Russians’ direct-fire weapons. The Russians may even briefly have cut the 0504 near Bakhmut in late February or early March before Ukrainian counterattacks pushed them back.

The fight for these flanks, and the roads they command, are the twin fulcrums on which the long, bloody battle for Bakhmut balances. Which explains why the Ukrainians in recent days apparently directed some of their best firepower at that building in Yahidne.

It probably was a hard choice. Both sides in the Bakhmut fight have complained about shortages of artillery shells and other ammunition. But ammo shortage seems to be more severe on the Ukrainian side. One of Kyiv’s brigade commanders described a “catastrophic shortage of shells.” Every round has to count.

It’s not totally clear what munition or munitions Ukrainian forces aimed at the structure in Yahidne. Some pro-Ukrainian sources believe it was one of the winged, GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs the United States recently donated to Ukraine, and which the Ukrainian air force has fitted to some of its aging, ex-Soviet warplanes.

The JDAM-Extended Range is Ukraine’s most potent long-range aerial weapon. Its pop-out wings lend the unpowered bomb additional range compared to a wingless bomb.

Flying at treetop height to avoid Russian air-defenses then angling up at the last second, a Ukrainian pilot can lob a JDAM-ER at targets five or 10 miles away or even farther, depending on their altitude and speed. “This is really just the latest in [our] efforts to help them to make their existing aircraft fleet as effective as possible,” U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper told reporters in January.

A JDAM with a radar fuze explodes 20 feet over the ground, likely pulverizing any building directly beneath it. Many buildings in central Bakhmut have basements that can double as fortified fighting positions, but Lee pointed out that more structures along the city’s flanks lack basements. That makes them, and any troops sheltering inside, especially vulnerable to a JDAM.

It’s not clear how many JDAMs Ukraine has. U.S. Air Force general James Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, two weeks ago told reporters the Ukrainians “have enough to do a couple of strikes.”

While Kyiv’s JDAM inventory may have increased since then, it’s likely the precision bombs still are in short supply. That Ukrainian forces may have aimed one of them at a building near Bakhmut underscores the city’s importance. Even as casualties mount and supplies run low, both sides in the year-old wider war are determined to win in Bakhmut.