Day 290: December 10The Battle for Bakmut continues, and the Russians are launching one wave of assaults after another. A lot of reports suggest that the Russians have advanced along the whole front line and got even closer to the center of the city. But in actuality, if we look at the closest Russian positions to the city, we can see the Russians only took control over the garbage dump and haven’t even reached the Ukrainian defense line.As of now, Bakhmut is being stormed from three sides, with the most intense fights taking place in Opytne. Even though the Russians did not establish full control over Opytne, and the fights are still taking place on the first intersection of streets, many sources indicate that the Ukrainians decided to abandon Ivanhrad altogether. There are big pros and cons to this decision. On the one hand, Ivanhrad is a much thinner settlement with only two lines of houses. Since it is a separate settlement, supplying it requires crossing the field, which is extremely problematic because this field is located in the lowlands, so the Russians can see every Ukrainian move between these two villages. So, retreating from this settlement allowed the Ukrainians to save a lot of resources, otherwise, they would be losing too many men by trying to defend a weak position. On the other hand, by giving Ivanhrad to the Russians, the Ukrainians inevitably facilitated the development of the Russian offensive. After the Russians took control over Ivanhrad, their area of control increased significantly. Now the Russians in Ivanhrad can effectively shield their forces in Vesela Dolyna and provide cover for their advances.And this is exactly what the Russians did. As you might still remember, if the aftermath of Ukrainian counterattacks last month, the Russians completely lost their positions to the southeast of Bakhmut. But now, with a good cover from Ivanhrad, they could start advancing in this direction once again. Their first target became sand pits. Since it is almost on the same level as Ivanhrad, they established control over this region without significant hurdles. After that, their second target became the local garbage dump. Here, the Russians also had an advantage because there is a long trench around the dump which impedes movement from the Ukrainian side but allows to easily enter this object from the Russian side. However, further advancement proved to be complicated and the garbage dump remains the closest Russian position to the city.The Ukrainians still control two industrial areas around the dump, which is exactly where intense fights are taking place. What is interesting is that if we look at the invasion map of Bakhmut, we can see that the Russians haven’t even reached the main Ukrainian defense line. If we go back to the satellite image, we can infer where exactly the Ukrainians have established their defenses, and it looks like they are leveraging the natural barrier in the form of swamps. Crossing the swamps to assault the residential area is extremely difficult, which indicates that the Russians might focus their efforts on either attacking the industrial area to the west of their current positions or the residential area to the north of their current positions. In any case, the fact that the Russians have a very limited number of options allows the Ukrainians to allocate their resources more efficiently by focusing only on these two areas. Overall, despite the heavy fights and hundreds of troops falling in combat, the Russians have extremely unimpressive gains in the least protected areas of Bakhmut. So, the actual battle may not have started yet because the Russians have not reached the main defense lines created around Bakhmut.If you are against the invasion of Ukraine and want to support the work that I am doing, consider making a purchase in the online store UA Supporter. Here you can find a lot of products with Ukrainian symbols, to not only show your support for this channel, but also for Ukraine.