DISPATCH FROM UKRAINE
Wagner’s retreat leaves ruin in its wake for Russia
Regular army must fight for Bakhmut alone as mercenaries pull out, reports Richard Spencer
The attritional struggle is regarded by some as this conflict’s equivalent of Stalingrad
SOFIIA GATILOVA/REUTERS
For more than a year, the woods around Bakhmut have popped with the sound of artillery.
A drive on any day along the country roads leading from the town to other, bigger cities would reveal tanks hiding in hedgerows and cannons draped with camouflage netting in the undergrowth.
The roads are what gives the town importance. Whether that is worth the tens of thousands of lives shed to conquer or defend it is something only the war’s outcome will decide.
• Wagner fighters have left Ukraine, says US
Still it goes on. Now it is the Ukrainians who are advancing, unwilling to accept Bakhmut’s loss in May, the Russians’ only, paltry, victory this year. That was owed to the suicidal determination of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner
