Monthly Archives: March 2023

By Michael F. Duggan

With so much attention focused on Bakhmut, it is easy to forget that the Ukrainian front is 600 miles long—roughly 125 miles longer that the entire Western Front in World War One—and that fighting is occurring at many points along that line. One of those places is a bulge around the town of Avdiivka.

Located few miles northwest of the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk, Avdiivka had a pre-2014 population of around 32,000, meaning that it is, or was, about half the size of Bakhmut. It is an industrial town notable for the Avdiivka Coke Plant, the largest of its kind in Ukraine. The salient around the town is immediately north of what was the Donetsk Sergei Prokofiev International Airport, destroyed in the 2014-15 fighting. It is about 56 miles south of Bakhmut.

Avdiivka saw heavy fighting in the Donbas War in eastern Ukraine beginning in 2014. It was captured by pro-Russian forces during the spring of 2014 and retaken by the Ukrainians that summer. The town was the site of a pitched battle in early 2017. Although Avdiivka is mostly destroyed, and most of its civilian population has left, its industrial significance and recent history explain much of its importance to both sides.

As with Bakhmut, the Russians may see it is a possible strategic gateway to points west. The attacks in and around Bakhmut and Avdiivka now appear to be prongs of their larger offensive. Their strategy seems to be focused on these two strong points with a goal of drawing Ukrainian units and resources from other sectors thus thinning out the long defensive line. If the defense of Bakhmut is any indication, the Ukrainian defenders of Avdiivka will fight with courage, skill, and tenacity.

There is also a large salient forming north of Bakhmut around the city of Sivers’k.

Postscript, February 15, 2024
The fall of Avdiivka now appears to be inevitable, and the grinding Russian offensive all along the line continues.

By Michael F. Duggan

Ninety years ago this past Monday, the newly inaugurated Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his first Fireside Chat, “The Banking Crisis.” Roosevelt would shepherd the nation through the Great Depression and give us Glass-Steagall and the FDIC and would reregulate the economy. The result was a quarter-century of unparalleled prosperity following the Second World War.

After the financial collapse of 2008 and the depression that followed (don’t let anybody tell you that it was a “great recession;” it is a depression that still persists in large swaths of the nation), we got the Dodd-Frank Act, which required that banks act responsible with your money. That act was repealed in 2018, and banks have apparently gone back to their old risky behavior. Now a number of banks have collapsed or are in trouble, and once again we are left wondering how far it will go.

How do you like deregulation now?

By Michael F. Duggan

In previous postings, I conjectured that the fight for Bakhmut would be a hybrid of a grinding Western Front offensive of the First World War, and an Eastern Front encirclement offensive of the Second World War. I stand my this assessment, but would like to clarify the former part of my prediction.

During World War One, there were two primary kinds of offensives. There were attrition offensives, like the German attack at Verdun and the resulting battled that lasted from February 21, 1916 to December 18, 1916, and there were attempted breakthroughs, like the British Somme Offensive of July 1, 1916 to November 18, 1916, and the German Spring Offensive of March 21-July 18, 1918 (there were also diversionary attacks that sometimes turned into major actions in their own right). The Battle of Bakhmut, with its slow, grinding character, appears to have the qualities of an attrition offensive with the likely goal of a breakthrough, thus making it a hybrid of both kinds of Great War offensives (it may also divert attention and resources from other parts of the front).

There is something obscene to the logic of attrition, where the goal is to outlast the enemy by maximizing their casualties, and turning salients into kill zones. As with Verdun, the attackers at Bakhmut know that the defenders, who have shown incredible courage and skill, will hold out as long as possible, and that they may choose death over withdrawal or surrender. This is the danger implicit in defending a position of great symbolic importance, and one wonders why the Ukrainians don’t fall back to prepared positions west of the town (like the German Hindenburg Line of 1917). As it is, a hole in the line at Bakhmut could open up the rest of the Donetsk Oblast to the Russians. It might allow them to roll up the rest of the line. It might do both. It might do neither. Although the tide of war appears to be favoring the Russians at this point, nothing is certain in war, and it is possible that a war of position and stalemate will persist regardless of which way the battle goes.

What we do know is that Russian gains in and around Bakhmut can be measured in terms of yards. We can speculate that, like a grinding First World War offensive, both sides are taking horrendous casualties. The question is the degree to which the outcome will be strategic or symbolic or both and what will follow.