Russia floods Ukrainian town of Bakhmut with troops

The battle in the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut is growing in importance as both sides deploy their forces in the battle.

Russian forces are increasing pressure on the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, pouring in waves of fighters to break the Ukrainian resistance and targeting supply lines in a bloody campaign aimed at securing Moscow's first significant battlefield victory in months.

Eleven months after the launching the invasion of Moscow, Bakhmut and the areas surrounding it became a center of intense fighting, with increasing importance as both sides added forces to the battle. Russia has stepped up its efforts to capture Bakhmut, who could be the key to seizing the entire Donbass region, after months of bombardment starting in the summer yielded little gain.

"The situation is very tough," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a recent overnight address after meeting with military leaders. He said: "There are constant attempts to break through our defence."

During the war, firepower proved essential to Russian gains, but the battle for Bakhmut was different.

Increasingly, according to Ukrainian fighters and analysts, Moscow is relying on cruder tactics: trying to swing the city into its column of victories thanks to the sheer weight of troop numbers.As a result, according to the Ukrainians, Russian losses in recent fighting in Bakhmut were higher than in previous months.

Part of Russia's evolving strategy appears to be to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses with waves of troops, many came from President Vladimir V. Putin's call for 300,000 men in September. It would be a break from Moscow's summer campaigns elsewhere in the Donbass, when artillery pounded towns for weeks before Russia launched a sustained ground offensive.

In Bakhmut, Ukraine, suffered heavy losses. But the calculation for each side is not the same.

ImageOleksandr's funeral Korovniy, a Ukrainian soldier killed in the Battle of Bakhmut, Monday in Sloviansk.Credit...Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Michael Kofman, director Russian Studies at NAC, a research institute in Arlington, Va., said the battle cost Russia more in casualties because its fighters often fought on foot, without the support of armored vehicles. But while Ukraine's casualties may be fewer, he said in a recent episode of a military affairs podcast, War on the Rocks, they could be more painful.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Many of the troops fighting for Russia around Bakhmut were recruited from prison and are less well trained than most of the soldiers Russia started the war with. Ukraine has relied primarily on the National Guard and other forces to maintain its main defensive line at Bakhmut, with better-trained infantry units rushing in if these fighters are attacked or retreat.

"Ukraine was forced...