#ISW assessed on September 11 that the loss of Izyum doomed the initial Russian campaign plan to attack Slovyansk from multiple directions and that even the seizure of #Bakhmut would “no longer support any larger effort to accomplish the original objectives of this phase of the campaign since it would not be supported by an advance from Izyum in the north.” ISW also assessed that Russian offensive operations against Bakhmut and around Donetsk City have “lost any real operational significance for Moscow and merely waste some of [Russia’s] extremely limited effective combat power.”
Wagner mercenaries shifted their approach to seizing Bakhmut to a focus on encircling and trapping Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut City by expending a high proportion of their estimated 40,000 prisoner recruits in deadly human wave attacks. At least 22,000 prisoners disappeared from Russian prisons between October and November 2022 alone - likely as a result of Wagner’s prisoner recruitment efforts. A Russian opposition outlet concluded that 55 percent of the total reported Wagner fatalities in October occurred just on October 24 and October 27 – when Ukrainian forces resisted Wagner assaults on the eastern outskirts of the city. The outlet concluded that the number of social media reports commemorating Wagner servicemen increased by more than 2.5 times as they were committed to suicidal drives on Bakhmut’s immediate outskirts.
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