On April 4, Russian forces attacked Chasiv Yar, a Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine just west of the ruins of Bakhmut. Three months later this week, they finally captured the town’s most vulnerable neighborhood—its canal district.
But seizing this tiny part of Chasiv Yar, an industrial town that was once home to 12,000 people, cost the Russians thousands of casualties. The Russian military has reportedly lost 99,000 troops since the start of the Chasiv Yar campaign. And while not all of them died in and around Chasiv Yar, a significant portion of them certainly did.
“Russia has made some progress on the ground and yet even this has come at massive costs,” commented Mick Ryan, a retired Australian army general. In expending so many lives for so little gain, Russia “appears to have blown what might have been its last chance to strike a decisive blow against Ukraine in this war,” Ryan added.
Most likely, what happens next is what has been happening—for months. Russian forces inch forward at enormous cost in people and equipment, while inflicting much lighter losses on Ukrainian forces. For every town—or even neighborhood—the Russians capture, they bury tens of thousands of their own troops.
The Ukrainian garrison in Chasiv Yar hasn’t stopped fighting. Ukrainian spokesperson Nazar Voloshyn said the garrison retreated a few blocks to the west, across the north-south Siversky Donets-Donbas Canal, because Russian bombs and artillery had destroyed all the buildings in the canal district.
Defensive positions on the western side of the canal are easier to defend, as the Russian must first cross the canal—an awkward though not impossible maneuver—before directly assaulting Ukrainian lines.
It might surprise some that the Ukrainian garrison—led by the army’s 41st and 67th Mechanized Brigades, 56th Motorized Brigade and 5th Assault Brigade, as well as the 241st Territorial Defense Brigade—held out as long as it did in the isolated and exposed canal district.
As early as late May, Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight predicted Chasiv Yar “will eventually be lost to Russian forces.” But the garrison fought on for another six weeks.
It helped that, in mid-April, the administration of U.S. Pres. Joe Biden began shipping munitions to Ukraine again following the collapse of a six-month effort by Russia-friendly Republican lawmakers to withhold aid.
It has also helped the Ukrainian defense that Russia’s heavy losses are making Russian regiments and brigades weaker, even as the Kremlin manages—just barely—to recruit fresh troops to replace the dead and wounded.
That’s because the pace of the losses compels Moscow to rush fresh troops to the front without adequate leadership, training or equipment. “Russia is less able to build a better quality, large force that might be able to undertake larger-scale offensive operations,” Ryan explained.
That’s cold comfort to the Ukrainian troops defending Chasiv Yar. They fight their battles block by block, regardless of the wider strategic context. And more brutal block battles are likely in Chasiv Yar as the Russians look to extend their gains in one of the few places they’re advancing at all.
According to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies, “Russian forces will soon begin attacks across the Siversky Donets-Donbas canal in central Chasiv Yar from their positions in the canal neighborhood.”
Sources:
1. Mick Ryan: https://x.com/WarintheFuture/status/1807971574466990397
2. Kyiv Independent: https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-withdraws-from-eastern-chasiv-yar-neighborhood-military-says/
3. Frontelligence Insight: https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/donbas-situation-report-may-21st
4. Center for Defense Strategies: https://cdsdailybrief.substack.com/p/russias-war-on-ukraine-040724
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