Putin doesn’t care that 20,000 of his soldiers are dead, he’ll get more – unless powerful forces in Moscow get him first
IN the struggle for freedom in Ukraine, a crater-strewn quagmire called Highway T0504 is taking on historic significance.
It is the last route out of the city of Bakhmut for the country’s troops, whose fierce resistance has taken the lives of an estimated 10,000 Wagner Russian mercenaries in the past six months, according to new US intelligence.
Under intense artillery fire, Ukrainian forces make perilous thunder runs up and down this strategic stretch of road from Bakhmut to the safety of nearby Kostyantynivka.
It enables them to bring in supplies and take out casualties from a city that both the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his bloody private Wagner Group army are determined to claim.
These mercenaries have so little regard for their men that they shoot them dead if they dare to turn back when faced with Ukrainian bullets and bombs.
Intelligence suggests that 60 to 70 per cent of Wagner’s ground troops will die in every assault — when often the aim is just to dig a trench a bit closer to opposition lines.
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It is clear why Putin is engaged in such World War Two-style warfare, conducting a siege reminiscent of Stalingrad — although in this case it is the Russians who are the attackers.
Putin is in desperate need of victory, however small or tactically insignificant it may be.
His once-feared army has attacked Vuhledar and Avdiivka and tried to push west from Kreminna over the winter, but it has failed to make any significant advances.
Figures released by the US National Security Council this week suggest that 20,000 Russian personnel have died in the past six months across the front line, with another 80,000 badly injured.
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With spring already here, only Bakhmut offers the hope of success.
The question many observers have been puzzling over is why Ukraine continues to defend a city which, to all intents and purposes, is lost to the enemy.
Ukraine’s military never gives out figures for its casualties, but there are suggestions it has been losing between 100 and 200 troops a week in Bakhmut.
While that is far fewer than the Russians, those losses are painful.
Many think the Ukrainians view the fight for the city as a way to deplete Putin’s forces.
But I wonder if they want to deny Russian troops a morale-boosting victory ahead of a spring offensive.
I am sure the Ukrainians will launch an assault on the invader’s stretched defences very soon.
Last week Nato announced it had delivered 98 per cent of the weaponry it had promised to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukraine has been given 230 main battle tanks, which is enough for two armoured brigades if they have the armoured fighting vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and air power to support them.
Those two armoured brigades will give them the capacity to punch through a 30-mile front, but the whole line dividing the two sides is about 650 miles long.
The Russians have built powerful defences in the south of eastern Ukraine, suggesting they think that is where the attack will come.
Many commentators in the West are sceptical that Zelensky’s forces are capable of achieving a decisive victory.
But there are no such doubts in this defiant nation. When they talk of victory, it is not just propaganda, they believe they can win.
Ukrainian politicians are worried though that the West will cool on support if there is a continued stalemate.
They fear that the longer this war drags on, the more likely it is that their allies will push them to the negotiating table.
Anyone who thinks that withdrawing military support would end the conflict is gravely mistaken.
Without Western aid they would fight a guerilla war which would continue for two generations.
Morale poor
There is no hope either that Putin will be deterred by suffering 100,000 casualties in half a year.
He can still find more men to send to the front even without another hugely unpopular national mobilisation.
The Kremlin has opted for a “crypto mobilisation” where extra forces are mobilised through various means.
The Russian authorities are determined to pull in anybody who avoided the draft last time and have made the latest annual 130,000 conscription virtually unavoidable.
But morale among troops is poor because Russia doesn’t feed or supply them well.
If Ukraine does rout Putin’s forces this year, then powerful forces within Moscow may finally turn on their defeated leader.
That sounds optimistic, but it is what the government in Kyiv believes.
Don’t rule it out because they have a habit of proving their doubters wrong.
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That’s why road T0504 could go down as the most famous road in this conflict.
Deny Putin a boost today and tomorrow both he and his dispirited forces could collapse