Good day. And as I have said on many occasions, when a battle extends beyond the usual limits of geography or duration, when it becomes not merely a contest of forces but a kind of political theatre layered upon an economic argument wrapped inside a psychological projection, one must examine it with care. Bakhmut, this week, demands exactly that kind of examination.

For months now, Bakhmut has been invoked in tones of inevitability by Russian commentators and, in equal measure, in tones of defiance by Ukrainians. It is a place whose tactical significance is modest but whose symbolic burden has grown grotesquely large. And what we have witnessed this week, beneath the surface narratives, is something subtle but unmistakable: the equation is shifting.

Let us begin with the Russian side of the ledger. Wagner’s forces have been thrown into this battle with an intensity that far exceeds the value of the ground. Week after week, waves of assault units have pressed against Ukrainian lines, often achieving local advances but at staggering cost. Videos, satellite imagery, intercepted communications — all of it points to a simple truth: Russia has been burning manpower at a rate that is strategically unsustainable.

And this is where many analysts go astray. They treat Bakhmut as if the territory were the goal. But that has long ceased to be the case. The goal — for Russia — became narrative salvage: the political need to claim progress after the setbacks of Kharkiv and Kherson. But political needs do not alter arithmetic. And the arithmetic of Bakhmut increasingly resembles a negative-yield investment.

Ukraine, by contrast, has approached the battle with a different logic. As I have often said, Ukraine does not fight to satisfy a narrative; it fights to conserve its sovereignty. And in Bakhmut, Ukraine's leadership made a calculated decision: to extract maximum attrition from Russian forces while preserving its own core units.

Contrary to early Western commentary, Ukraine did not cling to Bakhmut out of stubbornness or symbolic pride. It did so because it recognized a structural opportunity: Russia was willing to expend forces disproportionately. And when your adversary overspends, the correct strategic response is to let him — but on your terms.

This week, that calculus became visible. Russian advances slowed despite massive expenditure of ammunition and personnel. Ukrainian counter-attacks regained small but symbolically important positions on the flanks. And, more intriguingly, Russian pro-war commentators began expressing open frustration at the lack of operational payoff.

What is happening, therefore, is not simply that Bakhmut is “holding.” It is that the cost-benefit ratio of the Russian assault has inverted. The more Russia pushes, the more it exhausts itself. The more Ukraine holds, the more time it buys to prepare for operations elsewhere.

Let me emphasize a point I have made before: attritional warfare favors the side with the stronger political foundation, not the larger population. Russia's political foundation — masked by grand rhetoric — is brittle. Ukraine’s, ironcially for some observers, has proven remarkably resilient.

As we close this week, the shape of the battle has begun to change. Not because dramatic lines have moved, but because the logic beneath the battle has shifted. Russia is discovering that it cannot convert human expenditure into strategic momentum. Ukraine is discovering that disciplined defense can achieve what rapid maneuver sometimes cannot: the exhaustion of an adversary's will.

When historians revisit Bakhmut, I doubt they will focus on which street was held on which date. They will focus on the transformation that became visible this week: the realization that the battle's value was no longer territorial but economic — and that Ukraine was winning the economic dimension.