The Russian strategy is to inflict a maximum of damage to the other side’s men, machines, and weapons at minimum cost to themselves. Wagner was a valuable agent of the strategy and helped make it work at Bahkmut, but Prigozhin got carried away with his unit’s success. From Jacques Baud at thepostil.com:
To understand what happened on June 24-25, 2023, we need to go back to the Battle of Bakhmut. In October 2022, the Russians realized that the West was trying to prolong the war by continuously supplying arms to Ukraine.
Russian Objectives
It should be remembered that the initial objectives of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine were to neutralize the military (“demilitarization”) and paramilitary (“denazification”) threat to the population of the Donbass. The aim was not to seize territory, but to combat a threat. This is important for understanding the Battle of Bakhmut.
On March 28, 2022, during the encirclement of Mariupol and the neo-Nazi AZOV militia, the Russian military command announced that the objective of “denazification” had been achieved. Then, at the beginning of June 2022, after its equipment had been destroyed, the Ukrainian army was forced to ask the West for help: the “demilitarization” objective had been achieved for the first time. From then on, Ukraine depended on the West to pursue the war.
At this stage, the Europeans are convinced by their own propaganda that Kiev is on a winning streak. They’ve invested so much in this conflict that there’s no turning back. On September 14, 2022, in her State of the European Union address, Ursula von der Leyen declared that “this is a time for determination, not appeasement.” However, the Russians have already achieved their objectives over the last three months.
Russia gets the most bang for their military buck.
Maximum use of simple drones is one example, the Kesselschlacht learned from the Germans is another and no one does artillery better.
Moscow by winter?
In Russia, you lose.