Why Bakhmut has taken center stage in war in Ukraine
By The Associated Press March 8, 2023
1 of 20 - FILE - video footage of Bakhmut shot from the air with a drone for The Associated Press on Monday, Feb. 13, 2023, shows how the longest battle of the year-long Russian invasion has turned the city of salt and gypsum mines in eastern Ukraine into a ghost town. The relentless Russian bombardment has reduced Bakhmut to smoldering wasteland with few buildings still standing intact as Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have fought ferocious house-to-house battles amid the ruins. (AP Photo, File)
Little known outside Ukraine before the Russian invasion, Bakhmut has become a symbol of the country’s fortitude and perseverance in the face of the Kremlin’s onslaught.
The Ukrainian leadership vowed again this week to keep defending the city, but some observers have warned that holding on to it could be too dangerous and costly.
Bakhmut, which had a prewar population of more than 70,000, was an important center for salt and gypsum mining in the Donetsk region of the country’s industrial heartland known as the Donbas.
The city was also known for its sparkling wine production in historic underground caves. Its broad tree-lined avenues, lush parks and stately downtown with imposing late 19th century buildings made it a popular tourist attraction.
When a separatist rebellion engulfed the Donbas in April 2014, weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, Russia-backed separatists won control of the city but lost it a few months later.
Russian troops first attempted to recapture Bakhmut in early August but were pushed back.
The fighting abated in the following months as the Russian military faced Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south, but it resumed at full pace late last year. In January, the Russians captured the salt-mining town of Soledar just a few kilometers (miles) north of Bakhmut and advanced to the city’s suburbs.
The relentless Russian bombardment has reduced Bakhmut to a smoldering wasteland with few buildings still standing. Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have fought ferocious house-to-house battles in the ruins.
Soldiers from Russia’s private Wagner Group contractor have spearheaded the offensive, marching on “the corpses of their own troops” as Ukrainian officials put it. By the end of February, the Russians approached the only highway leading out of the city and targeted it with artillery, forcing Ukrainian defenders to rely increasingly on country roads, which are hard to use before the ground dries.
WHAT DO UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN OFFICIALS SAY ABOUT THE BATTLE?
Ukrainian authorities have hailed the city as the invincible “fortress Bakhmut” that has destroyed waves of Russian assailants.
As Russian pincers were closing on the city, a presidential aide warned last week that the military could “strategically pull back” if needed. But on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his top generals decided that the army will keep defending .. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-bakhmut-0713f4b6c03e04e88a9a7d589cf00000 .. Bakhmut and reinforce its troops there.
For the Kremlin, capturing Bakhmut is essential for achieving its stated goal of taking full control of Donetsk, one of the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed in September.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that the seizure of Bakhmut would allow Russia to press its offensive deeper into the region.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the rogue millionaire who owns the Wagner Group, charged that his forces were destroying the best Ukrainian units in Bakhmut to prevent them from launching attacks elsewhere.
At the same time, he harshly criticized the Russian Defense Ministry for failing to provide Wagner with ammunition in comments that reflected his longtime tensions with the top military brass and exposed problems that could slow down the Russian offensive.
WHAT DO EXPERTS SAY?
Military experts note that Ukraine has turned Bakhmut into a meat grinder for Russia’s most capable forces.
“It has achieved its aim as effectively being the anvil on which so many Russian lives have been broken,” Lord Richard Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff of the British armed forces, said on Sky News.
Phillips P. O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, said the battle for Bakhmut “confirms that the Russian army is still struggling with basic operations.”
He noted that the Kremlin’s continuing emphasis on land grabs regardless of losses means that “Russian strategic aims are bleeding the Russian army greatly.”
While Ukrainian and Western officials pointed out that Russian combat losses were much higher than Ukrainian, some observers argued that the defense of Bakhmut was distracting Ukrainian resources that could be used in a planned counteroffensive later in the spring.
Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CAN, a Washington-based think tank, observed that the Ukrainian defenders “achieved a great deal, expending Russian manpower and ammunition,” but added that it could be wise for Ukraine to save its forces for future offensive operations.
“Strategies can reach points of diminishing returns,” and given that Ukraine “is trying to husband resources for an offensive, it could impede the success of a more important operation,” he said.
WHAT COULD HAPPEN NEXT?
Ukrainian and Western officials emphasize that a Ukrainian retreat from Bakhmut will not have strategic significance or change the course of the conflict.
The Ukrainian military has already strengthened defensive lines west of Bakhmut to block the Russian advance if Ukrainian troops finally retreat from the city. The nearby town of Chasiv Yar that sits on a hill just a few kilometers west could become the next bulwark against the Russians. Further west are Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the heavily fortified Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk.
And even as the Russian military tries to pursue its offensive in Donetsk, it needs to keep large contingents in other sections of the Donbas and in the southern Zaporizhzhia region where Ukrainian forces are widely expected to launch their next counteroffensive.
Att: B402/brooklyn13 -- Iran oil sales are surging and Hamas is terrorizing. Is Biden to blame?
"Misinformed public - No, Trump would not have stopped Russia’s invasion of Ukraine "UPDATES: Latest Russia-Ukraine updates: US warns over sanctions busting "Ukraine clings to Bakhmut, top US official tells Russian counterpart Washington backs Kyiv all the way""
Related: B402, i don't give a fuck if you don't believe that i had it, fact is i did, and am now in the process of posting it. Actually just had a thought i should have said to you earlier ... LOLOL with all your fuckwits going on about Biden funding terrorism where, i wonder, are all your posts regarding Netanyahu's funding of Hamas. Even YOU must know it is Netanyahu which has been doing what you misinformation mongers are accusing Iran and Biden of doing. How Netanyahu's Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel "Ehud Barak blames Binyamin Netanyahu for “the greatest failure in Israel’s history” Israel says it kills second Hamas commander in refugee camp, first evacuees leave Gaza See also: Vengeance Is Not a Policy" https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174474005
Analysis by Glenn Kessler The Fact Checker October 25, 2023 at 4:41 p.m. EDT
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the former House speaker, departs a Republican Caucus meeting on Capitol Hill on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“We have to destroy Hamas, but you cannot do it without confronting Iran. They need to change their policies. Iran only had $4 billion in the foreign exchange when [Biden] took office. They now have $70 billion. Iran only produced 400,000 barrels of oil a day when they — when Biden took office. They now produce 3 million. They’re getting billions of dollars to fund terrorism around the world.”
“What is so infuriating is, over the last 2½ years, Joe Biden and the Biden administration have flowed nearly $100 billion to Iran. … The biggest pot of money deals with the refusal of the Biden administration to enforce oil sanctions. U.S. law puts tough oil sanctions on Iran. Biden came in, immediately stopped enforcing them. Today, Iran is selling 2 million barrels a day of oil. That has produced $80 billion, roughly, in revenue. That is funding these Hamas death squads. That is funding the rockets. That is funding terrorism.”
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Republicans have suggested that Biden administration policies toward Iran somehow financed the assault.
Originally, Republicans focused on the release of $6 billion in Iranian funds that had been held by South Korea — released in a deal to win the freedom of five American detainees — but that money had not yet been received by Iran. After the Hamas attack, the administration said it had prevented Iran from tapping the money.
So now there is a new talking point: that Iran has earned far more money from oil sales under President Biden than it did under President Donald Trump, and that, in turn, has funded terrorism. As Cruz put it in his television interview, “Understand, Hamas is a proxy for Iran. Without Iran, there would be no Hamas.”
For context, we should note that there is no evidence that Iran, which has suffered economically from sanctions over its nuclear program, is sending billions of dollars to Hamas. Trump’s State Department calculated in 2020 .. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Outlaw-Regime-2020-A-Chronicle-of-Irans-Destabilizing-Activity.pdf .. that Iran sends Hamas $100 million a year. So far, there is no report showing that the amount of funding from Iran to Hamas has increased under Biden.
Yet the administration’s policies certainly are fair game. Let’s evaluate whether the numbers cited by McCarthy and Cruz are correct and what, if anything, can be attributed to Biden’s policies.
The facts
The basic thrust of both comments is that, during Biden’s presidency, Iran has benefited economically. McCarthy’s numbers are mostly wrong, and Cruz’s appear exaggerated. But there is little question that Iran — the world’s third-largest holder of oil reserves and the second-largest of natural gas — is able to sell more petroleum products than it was during the later part of the Trump administration.
Iran’s reserves were $122.5 billion in 2018, according to the IMF, before new sanctions were imposed after Trump pulled out of an international agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Without success, Biden has sought to restore the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran — a policy that itself is a signal to oil markets that sanctions could soon be waived.
As for Iran’s current oil production, McCarthy said Iran was producing 3 million barrels a day and Cruz said Iran was selling 2 million barrels a day. Both numbers are correct,according to SVB International, a consulting firm .. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/irans-oil-output-exports-rise-washington-tehran-talk-2023-08-31/ . Mohsen Khojastehmehr, chief executive of the National Iranian Oil Company, said in August that Iran would soon be producing 3.5 million barrels a day.
But McCarthy gilds the lily by referencing 400,000 barrels a day in 2020.
First of all, that’s a number for oil exports, not production, so he’s mixing apples and oranges. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration .. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49116 , Iran’s oil production in 2020 was just under 2 million barrels a day. Second, the pandemic sent oil production and sales plummeting around the globe. Iran’s production in 2020 was the lowest in almost 40 years, the EIA said.
In 2019, before the pandemic, Iranian oil production was about 2.6 million barrels a day until May of that year, when sanctions waivers expired, and then fell to 2.1 million. As for exports, Iran sold about 600,000 barrels a day in 2019.
So clearly Iran had begun to sell more oil. Cruz, in his comments, directly implicates the administration: “U.S. law puts tough oil sanctions on Iran. Biden came in, immediately stopped enforcing them.”
Patrick Clawson .. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/patrick-clawson , director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s program on Iran and U.S. policy, said that’s not quite right. He said the Trump administration was unusually aggressive — a top State Department official even directly contacted the captains of tankers .. https://www.ft.com/content/20188064-cefb-11e9-99a4-b5ded7a7fe3f .. carrying Iranian oil, offering millions of dollars if they would deliver the cargo to a neutral port — but he said in general, sanctions erode over time.
“It would have been tough for a second-term Trump administration to maintain the same level of effort as the first term,” he said.
The group estimated that Iranian oil sales to China totaled $47 billion in 2021 and 2022.
“With China’s increasing imports of Iranian petroleum, Chinese buyers may have concluded that the economic benefits of continuing to buy Iranian petroleum exceed the risks of potential U.S. sanctions,” the Congressional Research Service said in a report this week. It noted that China is able to obtain Iranian oil often below prevailing market prices.
Philip Verleger, an economist and energy consultant, said sanctions cannot be sustained unless a large number of countries are participating — and even then they will weaken over time. “The oil is going to move,” he said, unless the U.S. Navy starts boarding tankers.
The Biden administration rejects the idea that it is not enforcing sanctions. A Treasury Department official said an administration diplomatic campaign has ensured there are no new buyers of Iranian oil — he said sales are made to the same buyers that evaded sanctions under Trump — and thus Iran has been forced to rely entirely on black-market oil sales with a steep price discount.
The United States has also seized nearly 5 million barrels of petroleum product, he said. Last month, the Justice Department announced the first criminal resolution .. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-first-criminal-resolution-involving-illicit-sale-and-transport .. involving the illicit sale and transport of Iranian oil in violation of U.S. sanctions. In this case, nearly 1 million barrels of seized oil was tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the State Department has designated a foreign terrorist organization.
Cruz said that “over the last 2½ years, Joe Biden and the Biden administration have flowed nearly $100 billion to Iran.” We asked a spokesman for data to back up that figure but did not get a response.
It’s possible that Cruz was referring to an estimate .. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/13/lax-sanctions-enforcement-has-yielded-a-windfall-for-iran/ .. this month by the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). The organization said that Iran, because of “lax sanctions enforcement,” has earned $95 billion in oil revenue. The report attributed about $32 billion to relaxed or unenforced sanctions.
“Markets respond to signals, be they political and economic,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, co-author of the report. “Over a year and a half of unenforced oil sanctions meant that when enforcement began, however sporadically, in May 2022, the market did not see this as a measure of seriousness. Iran’s climbing export volumes means Tehran didn’t either.”
Tyler O’Neil, the author of the Daily Signal estimate, said in an email that “it is, of course, impossible to predict exactly how oil prices would have changed had Trump remained president,” but he faulted Biden’s policies for contributing to higher oil prices. Under Biden, oil reached a high of $113.77 in June 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Prices dropped to the $70 range in May and June but have spiked after the Israel-Gaza war .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/?itid=lk_inline_manual_52 .. erupted.
The Pinocchio test
There are several problematic elements to these statements. The numbers are off, especially McCarthy’s, and they exaggerate the extent to which Iran had managed to boost its oil sales and foreign exchange reserves. Cruz all but says that the Biden administration is responsible for all the money Iran has received from oil sales, when it’s virtually impossible to cut off a major oil exporter from worldwide markets. If you accept the FDD report, the figure that might be attributable to Biden’s sanctions policies would be $32 billion. That’s a big number, but not as high as $100 billion.
Whether any of these earnings can be traced to the funding of the Hamas attack on Israel is still unknown, but Iran makes no secret of its backing of the group.
We find ourselves on the cusp between Two and Three Pinocchios. McCarthy’s figures are so wrong that they are worthy of Three Pinocchios, but as a general matter, it is correct that Iran has recovered from the nadir of oil sales during the pandemic and now is selling more oil than before Trump imposed sanctions. Whether Biden is entirely to blame for that is up for debate, but Republicans could make that case without resorting to exaggeration. So we award Two Pinocchios.
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