There’s lots happening today in the Russia-Ukraine war and some of these stories seem to have a connection.

The battle in Bakhmut has seemed to be nearing defeat for Ukraine for several weeks. Earlier this month a Ukrainian presidential adviser said the battle had “achieved its goals by 1000%.” He added, “Even if the military leadership at some point decides to retreat to more favorable positions, the case of defending Bakhmut will be a great strategic success.” Those sounds like the sort of things you say when you’re about to retreat. Also, last week the head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg said Bakhmut could fall “in the coming days.”

But so far that hasn’t happened. In fact, Ukraine is claiming it has killed a lot of Russian soldiers in Bakhmut in the past week.

Ukrainian commanders, who have committed significant resources to defending the city, say their strategy aims to tie Russia’s forces down and prevent Moscow from launching any further offensives in the coming months.

“In less than a week, starting from 6 March, we managed to kill more than 1,100 enemy soldiers in the Bakhmut sector alone, Russia’s irreversible loss, right there, near Bakhmut,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

He added that 1,500 Russian soldiers were wounded badly enough to keep them out of further action.

Russia’s defence ministry said Russian forces had killed “more than 220 Ukrainian servicemen”.

Neither figure can be confirmed but it’s interesting that the figures given by each side work out to exactly a 5:1 kill rate which is exactly what some previous estimates of the fighting have suggested was the case.

Russia has lost approximately five soldiers for every Ukrainian soldier killed in the battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut, CNN reported late Monday, citing NATO estimates.

Moscow’s forces, led by fighters from the Wagner mercenary group, have been waging brutal fighting for Bakhmut since August, taking severe casualties in pursuit of what would be Russia’s first battlefield win in months.

An unidentified NATO official told CNN that the five-to-one death ratio was an informed estimate based on the U.S.-led military bloc’s intelligence.

So, again, the numbers can’t be confirmed but the ratio is probably right. And that brings us to our second, related story. Saturday the Institute for the Study of War published an assessment of the Russian campaign which suggested the internal fight between the Russian army and the Wagner group was playing out in Bakhmut.

The conflict between the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin likely reached its climax against the backdrop of the Battle of Bakhmut. The Russian MoD – specifically Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff General Valery Gerasimov – is likely seizing the opportunity to deliberately expend both elite and convict Wagner forces in Bakhmut in an effort to weaken Prigozhin and derail his ambitions for greater influence in the Kremlin…

Prigozhin likely anticipated that Ukrainian forces would entirely withdraw from Bakhmut out of fear of imminent encirclement and hoped that his commitment of Wagner’s elite forces would be sufficient to generate that effect. Prigozhin even offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to allow Ukrainian forces to withdraw from Bakhmut in two days on March 3.[8] Limited information about the Prigozhin’s pleas likely indicates that the Russian military command is intent on expending Wagner forces within the city. Spokesperson of the Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Serhiy Cherevaty also noted on March 11 that Ukrainian forces may be able to severely degrade Wagner and have already thinned out Wagner’s second prisoner formation over the winter.[9] Ukrainian servicemen noted in a social media video from March 12 that they are holding positions in Bakhmut waiting for Russians to “shoot each other.”[10] Russian military leadership may be allowing the Wagner Group to take high casualties in Bakhmut to simultaneously erode Prigozhin’s leverage while capturing the city at the expense of Wagner troops.

There’s a lot more to the ISW assessment but the gist is that Prigozhin is hoping to elevate himself with a win in Bakhmut while the Russian army, who he has criticized repeatedly, is probably happy to see his strength whittled away by Ukraine’s forces. The NY Times has a story up today about Prigozhin’s attempts to advance himself and the fact that not everyone is happy about it.

For months, Yevgeny Prigozhin has been Russia’s most public and provocative military leader in Ukraine. When he is not lauding the heroics of his private fighting force from the front lines, he is castigating the Russian generals for starving him of the supplies he needs to finish the work they could not.

Yet now, as his mercenaries struggle to complete a takeover of the eastern city of Bakhmut, Mr. Prigozhin is increasingly turning his attention to Russia’s home front, in what analysts see as attempts to secure a political offramp from the debilitating struggle on the battlefield.

He has said his fighting force, Wagner, will recede to the background after the fight for Bakhmut is over “to gradually reload, to shrink.” He also added, in a video message published on March 11, that Wagner would “transform into an army with ideology, and this ideology will be the struggle for justice.”…

“He sees his future at risk, and he is scrambling to present a place for himself after Bakhmut within the larger war,” said Jack Margolin, a Washington-based expert on Russia’s private military companies.

So, even Prigozhin seems to grasp that he’s made a lot of enemies and doesn’t have a lot of friends.

Finally, another story which isn’t directly related to these two but which seems significant. A Russian fighter apparently knocked a US surveillance drone out of the sky.

A Russian Su-27 fighter jet struck the propeller of a U.S. military Reaper surveillance drone on Tuesday, causing it to crash into the Black Sea in an incident condemned as “reckless’ by the U.S. military.

White House spokesman John Kirby said that although there have been other such intercepts, this one was noteworthy because it was “unsafe and unprofessional”. U.S. President Joe Biden had been briefed about the incident, Kirby added.

The drone was flying over international waters at the time. Granted the drones are there to provide information to Ukraine but this seems a bit reckless. It makes me wonder if this isn’t a sign of increasing desperation on Russia’s part.

Update: The drone intercept is now the lead story at CNN, NBC News, the Washington Post, etc. Here’s a bit of the Post story.

The confrontation, believed to be the first direct U.S.-Russia clash in the year since the Ukraine war began, highlights the high-stake risks of the conflict…

The Russian Defense Ministry denied striking the MQ-9 and claimed instead that, “as a result of sharp maneuvering,” the drone was observed by Russian pilots in “uncontrolled flight” before losing altitude and crashing into the sea. Jets were scrambled, officials said in a statement, when the American aircraft was detected flying “in the direction of the state border of the Russian Federation” with its transponders turned off,” what they characterized as a violation of boundaries established by Moscow for its “special military operation” in Ukraine…

A State Department spokesman, Ned Price, told reporters that senior U.S. officials would be in contact with their Russian counterparts to communicate “our strong objections.”

Contrary to the Russian denial, the US says the Russian jets were the ones making sharp and unprofessional maneuvers.

The Reaper drone and two Russian Su-27 aircraft were flying over international waters over the Black Sea on Tuesday when one of the Russian jets intentionally flew in front of and dumped fuel on the unmanned drone several times, a statement from US European Command said.

The aircraft then hit the propeller of the drone, prompting US forces to bring the MQ-9 drone down in international waters. Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder added Tuesday that the Russian aircraft flew “in the vicinity” of the drone for 30 to 40 minutes before colliding just after 7 a.m. Central European Time…

Kirby He said it was “not uncommon” for Russian aircraft to intercept US aircraft over the Black Sea, and said there had been other intercepts in recent weeks.

But he said the episode Tuesday was unique in how “unsafe, unprofessional and reckless” the Russian actions were.