Power Outages Darken Southern City as Ukraine Sees No Sign of Russian Pullback

Michael Kofman, an adjunct senior fellow for the transatlantic security program at the Center for a New American Security, said on the War on the Rocks podcast last week that Russian forces had been “trying to grind their way in Bakhmut for months now,” and added, “They haven’t taken very much territory at all.”

Mr. Kofman said that the city was an important prize for the Wagner Group’s leader, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and close associate of Mr. Putin, and that his stature would rise within the Kremlin if his campaign were to succeed. But his forces have suffered significant losses in Bakhmut in recent days, according to Mr. Kofman, who described the push there as a “pointless offensive” for Russia.

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