Ukraine’s risky gamble in Bakhmut may be paying off as infighting in Russia’s ranks threatens its hopes of capturing the city, experts say

“I do think the Ukrainians were right to stay and fight,” said Rajan Menon, a nonresident scholar in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank.

And if Prigozhin follows through with his plans to pull his mercenaries out of the fight, the regular Russian military could be left facing a dilemma, Menon said.

Ukraine “tied up a lot of Russian troops in Bakhmut, making it impossible to deploy them to other battle zones” in the wider Donbas region, Menon said. And while Kyiv’s troops have showed “extraordinary resilience” fighting there, they have also enjoyed the consequences of “poor Russian leadership and the infighting and poisonous relationship” between Russia’s professional military and Wagner.

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