- Russia has spent nine months trying to capture Bakhmut in a slow and brutal campaign.
- Experts say the city does not even have that much strategic value.
Russian forces have been fighting for nine months to take the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, in one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war.
But the city appears to have limited strategic importance to Russia's war effort, with the country seemingly committed to the grinding battle in an effort to gain a symbolic victory after months of losses and stalemates, experts say.
Russia has been slowly gaining ground in the city, with the BBC reporting on Sunday that its forces had effective control of both of the main roads that go into the city.
But it could be a Pyrrhic victory.
Capturing Bakhmut would have "limited operational value" for Russia, and its efforts have been "disproportionately costly" compared to the access it would gain from a victory, the UK Ministry of Defence said in December.
Russia first started shelling the city in May 2022, and fighting ramped up in August. But rather than a quick victory, the battle turned into a brutal deadlock between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
Both countries claim regularly to have killed more than a hundred enemy combatants a day in the city.
On Sunday, the UK defense ministry said that Russia was losing its soldiers at the highest rate since the first week of its invasion in February 2022, at an average of 824 deaths per day.
It said this "uptick" was due to multiple factors, including poor training for soldiers, and was being seen particularly in Bakhmut.
Ukrainians fighting in the city say it has been a "living hell" for months, while commanders on both sides have called the battle a "meat grinder."
Bakhmut may not be that important
Experts question the strategic value of the city, and say that fighting has destroyed Bakhmut so much that it's far less useful to Russia than it would have been earlier in the conflict.
Michael Kofman, the director of Russia Studies at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Time magazine that "Bakhmut in and of itself isn't that significant."
Winning Bakhmut would give Russia access to more of Donetsk, including the bigger cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
But ultimately, experts say, the city may not be important enough to justify the effort and expense Russia has put into it.
Capturing the city also doesn't likely aid progress for Russia as it tries to move beyond it.
William Alberque, who runs the arms control program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Insider that Ukraine has "already thought ahead to the next defensive line," which would likely limit any Russian gains.
Russia still wants Bakhmut
But the city has major symbolic importance.
It's one of only a few places where Russia has made progress, Karolina Hird, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War think tank, told Time.
Hird said the city "has become this rallying cry in the Russian information space."
Alberque, meanwhile, told Insider that Russia's new general in charge of Ukraine operations "is under tremendous pressure to show some progress."
He also added that Russia appears to be sacrificing its troops in order to grind down Ukraine's own supplies of ammunition and personnel.
"They can afford the pain, and they're estimating that Ukraine cannot," he said.
At the same time, Western officials have been advising Ukraine to leave Bakhmut and focus instead on pushing back against Russia in other ways, CNN reported, suggesting that those officials don't view the city as absolutely necessary to hold.
A US official even suggested in January that Russia gaining control of Bakhmut would not result in any strategic shift on the battlefield, Reuters reported.
Ukraine also wants to hold the city
And yet Ukraine is also still fighting tooth-and-nail for the city.
Sources told CNN in January that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that Ukraine could push Russia out of Bakhmut, and that having the city would allow it to retake more territory in the Donbas region.
Yehor Cherniev, a Ukrainian lawmaker and head of the Ukrainian delegation to the NATO parliamentary assembly, told Time this month that though the city "is not of strategic importance" to Ukraine, they will try to hold it as long as possible as doing so grinds down Russia's forces overall.
"In recent months, the Russians have been forced to spend a colossal amount of resources and reserves to take Bakhmut. In this regard, our plan was a success," he said.
The city has also become a major symbol for Ukraine. The phrase "Bakhmut holds" is now being used as a patriotic battle-cry across the country, NBC News reported.
All of this means that neither side is likely to back down, and many more lives will probably be lost in the fighting.