The battle over Bachmut has taken on the same symbolic value as Verdun during WWI, and at a similarly devastating cost in human lives for virtually no strategic gain for either side.
However, it appears as if the Wagner Group has finally exhausted itself by figuratively throwing people into a meat grinder. Their initiative appears to be lost, and they no longer have the resources to keep advancing. They took a few insignificant suburbs to Bachmut, but the Bachmut city proper (or, rather, the piles of rubble in the location where Bachmut used to be) remains under Ukrainian control.
The messaging from Jevgenij Prigosjin over the past week was a total failure. On the one hand, he complained over having been cut off from getting new troops and ammunition, as well as being disowned by the Kremlin. On the other hand, he tried to convince Ukraine that they had better give up and retreat from Bachmut, because his forces were obviously winning. That kind of double messaging might have worked in Soviet Russia, but in today's media landscape it only goes to show how desperate Russia is, and how little they know about how the world actually works.
Russia appears to be the victim of its own delusions. Bachmut is the hill they chose for the futile Russian dream of a new empire to die, and die it will.
Outside of the now depleted and exhausted forces of the Wagner Group, Russia has no soldiers left with the ability or even the will to fight, and they are running short on equipment and ammunition. Recent sightings of ancient T-56 tanks on the battlefield, with makeshift night sights tucked on as an afterthought, speak volumes of the lack of modern weaponry on the Russian side. Their situation is a lot more desperate than they are letting on.
