After months of pouring soldiers into eastern Ukraine, Russia’s progress essentially adds up to this: three small settlements and part of the city of Bakhmut, a high-profile battlefield with limited strategic value.
Compare that with what Moscow had hoped to achieve from its winter offensive by now: to seize the entire Donbas region — which contains dozens more settlements, some of them much larger than Bakhmut. To do that, Russia would have to recreate and win battles at the scale…