Talk:Battle of Bakhmut

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Per WP:ECR: Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace only to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided they are not disruptive.

Non-ECP users may not initiate or otherwise participate in discussions at this talk page. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Regarding Verdun & Stalingrad comparisons in lede

I understand these are sourced, but I feel the need to question and ask for other Wikipedians' input regarding the inclusion of comparisons to the battles of Verdun and Stalingrad. Having spent much time reading and studying these battles, particularly Stalingrad, I fail to see a correlation between the two. Those battles were on such a more massive scale, had many more strategic implications, and bear few resemblances to these battles in general. Does the inclusion of such comparisons really improve the article?

The sources seem to be articles by large news corporations making largely sensationalist comparisons, with scant tangible historical evidence in said articles to support them. Typically just vague statements like: "the Battle of Bakhmut echoes Verdun/Stalingrad" citing "urban combat", "house-to-house fighting", and other vignettes which could be drawn from practically any other large conventional war of the last century. I do not think such associations contribute much to informing readers about the actual content of the Battle of Bakhmut itself. Durchbruchmüller (talk) 03:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that these are unnecessary editorialising unsuited to a Wiki article, particularly when sourced from WP:NEWSORG. Every second battle appears to get some such comparison. Cinderella157 (talk) 04:16, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I actually agree that the historical comparisons to larger, more strategically significant battles should not be mentioned in the lede as it does not seem like an appropriate comparison and seems to be more editorializing sourced by sensationalist news reports than strictly encyclopedic. I would support removing mentions of historical battles from the lede, but keep them in the Analysis section. RopeTricks (talk) 00:55, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

After checking, everything after "The battle of Bakhmut has been described as a "meat grinder" and a "vortex" for both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries." should be removed from the lede in my opinion. Just let that be the last sentence. RopeTricks (talk) 00:59, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Casualties in infobox

Per WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE, an infobox is a place for simple summaries of key facts from the article. It should be supported by the article and the article should remain complete with the infobox removed. Unfortunately, we often see editors more intent on populating the infobox rather than editing the article such that the two are inconsistent. We should not be writing the article in the infobox. The casualties section for Ukraine is populated with conflicting information from multiple sources, which, in cases, are given as ranges or lower limits. The quantum of casualties from the battle cannot be described as a fact. It cannot be simply summarise. There is nuance to the reports that we do have, for which the infobox is unsuited. Consequently, the casualty information should be removed from the infobox and, where information has not been incorperated into the casualties section of the article, it should be added there. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:32, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

I have sid it before and I repeat it, let's leave it out until the war is over and historians talk about it. Slatersteven (talk) 10:58, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm in agreement here. There is no way to know the casualty figures. The only "estimates" we have are from contemporary Western sources, which have an obvious vested interest in inflating those numbers. Even more so for Ukrainian claims. We likely won't know the true numbers for decades, until the the Russian Ministry of Defense declassifies them, or they are released in some other way. True Soviet casualty figures for many battles from WWII were not known until the 1990s, for example. Better to leave it empty until we have multiple reliable sources after the battle has been properly studied. Durchbruchmüller (talk) 21:43, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 17 April 2024

Change Territorial Changes to "Russian capture of Bakhmut" Hollowww (talk) 18:59, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. That phrase doesn't seem to appear in a location where your proposed change makes grammatical sense. PianoDan (talk) 23:18, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Aftermath

Greetings @Alexiscoutinho, please don't remove sourced content which gives characteristics for the "victory" from the Aftermath section, as you did in [1]. It has been concluded in the RFC Talk:Battle of Bakhmut/Archive 5#RFC Russian Victory that the infobox should contain "Russian victory - see §Aftermath" text, and the Aftermath section contained characteristics for the "victory" during that RFC. So there is a consensus for the Aftermath section to contain characteristics for the "victory". Thanks! ManyAreasExpert (talk) 20:45, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Okay saw your comment regarding "Analysis" now. So we need to settle all these "Aftermath" and "Analysis" somehow, so it would be a less of a mess. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 20:50, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I thought about linking to the "Attrition and results" section directly, but decided not to because it looked kinda ugly in the infobox. Alexis Coutinho (talk) 20:55, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I'll leave it for a day or few, please other editors welcome suggest some good solution. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 21:18, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

• I would observe that the Aftermath section and those sections that follow are collectively what we would describe as the Aftermath section of a more conventionally structured article. This largely arises because the sections were created prior to a conclusion of the battle and have persisted through inertia. It was also populated rather indiscriminately with [news] articles as they appeared rather than applying a more top-down encyclopedic summary style. Following the RfC, an aftermath section was created to hastily comply with the letter of the result but not the spirit and intent. The guidance tells us a link or note should be made to the section of the article where the result is discussed in detail (such as "See the Aftermath section"). Consequently, the nuance of the result we would intend to direct the reader to with see Aftermath in the infobox is actually under the analysis. A note in the infobox Result: See Result section would be redundant and contrary to WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE. We should avoid anything like that.

I felt that the RfC was premature because it put the horse before the cart. We should have waited until the aftermath and conclusion of the battle had been effectively summarised in the body of the article and to a good extent, this has been borne out. I think it is time to make a more critical review of what we would conventionally call the aftermath, without preconceived constraints of the existing structure or content. Applying encyclopedic summary style rather than the more journalistic style presently used would make the text much tighter and more cohesive. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I guess the first and easiest step then would be to merge those sections and add a maintenance banner requesting a top-down synthesis of the post-battle topics, right? Alexis Coutinho (talk) 05:36, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

It isn't necessary to tag the section. We can just start to implement changes. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:55, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Though since this page is not my focus right now, I'll prefer to chose the path of least effort. :'( Alexis Coutinho (talk) 03:16, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Date range of battle

@Alexiscoutinho @Cinderella157 @ManyAreasExpert Giving July 3, 2022 as the starting date, justifying it with the capture of Lysychansk, is not appropriate. This is not an adequate justification. The attack on the city took place on August 1, 2022, and since the starting date cannot be justified otherwise, this date would have to be chosen as the start date of the battle. The end date as May 20, 2022 selected as the main one, the best end date for the battle is also wrong. Ukraine controlled until the end of November 2023, on November 29, 2023, probably the southwestern part of the city itself and its southwestern outskirts, and still very close to the city, and even in the city itself, less intense fighting took place and even heavy ground attack ones sometimes. Only then was Ukraine completely pushed out of the city and its outskirts and the fight for the city was actually completely over and ended with Russian victory and control of 100% of the administrative borders of the city and its outskirts, so I propose August 1, 2022-November 29, 2023 as the main date range of the battle with the note that there are also other date ranges. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bortak42 (talk • contribs) 13:38, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

THus we go back to "what is this article about", But (ye) if this os about the fight for the city, the start date be when RS said it started (that is the fight for the city, not the surrounding area). Slatersteven (talk) 13:40, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the 1 August start date is not supported by sources either. It was added on 3 August (in this edit) based on the sentence below, which already existed in the body:

On August 1, Russian forces launched massive ground attacks on settlements south and southeast of Bakhmut. Russian Telegram channel Voennyi Osvedomitel published footage of destroyed vehicles in a field, claiming that Russian forces are within two kilometers of Bakhmut. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation announced that the battle and assault on the city of Bakhmut had begun.

(emphasis added)

The sentence above was added by the user @Baba Mica in this edit, citing this source, ISW-CTP. Sounds great, but one serious problem. The supposed Russian MoD announcement simply doesn't exist. It's not mentioned in the ISW-CTP report. It doesn't seem to appear in any of that report's footnote sources. No announcement of the sort was made on any outlets of the Russian MoD that day, the previous day, or the next day. It's possible I am missing something, but after some extensive research, this seems to be a complete fabrication. I hope someone can prove me wrong. Note: After failing to verify through the sources back in February, I removed the claim in this edit. Regards SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 20:33, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

You can remove this fragment from the Ministry of National Defense and refer to this telegram that, in fact, the battle started then based on this information. Bortak42 (talk) 22:08, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I fail to see why the combat described in the Telegram post would mark the beginning of the battle of Bakhmut. You can find similar descriptions of combat near Bakhmut in the ISW reports of 31 July, 30 July, 29 July, indeed every consecutive day dating back to at least 13 July. SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 22:44, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Regarding the end date, we already had a lengthy discussion about it here. Changing the end date to November would completely wreck the scope of the article and reset months of RfC discussions. Most importantly, that proposed end date is not supported by any source as far as I know. At most it could be added as a technicality, a footnote or comment in the infobox or Aftermath. Alexis Coutinho (talk) 00:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

• The end date is reasonably established by sources - at least to within a few days. As to assigning a start date, we rely on a consensus in sources that would explicitly tell us when the start was. The problem is that we don't have sources telling us when it started. If we determine a start date based on certain events (such as the fall of Lysychansk), that is WP:OR. This recent edit by Boynamedsue is pertinent, where they say in their edit summary: battle dates are necessarily imprecise in this theatre, but we don't really need to go too deeply into it. That particular sentence is still problematic, even after I reworded it further and has been tagged (here). This source covers operations during July 22. While fighting in the "region" of Bakhmut is mentioned from early in the month, there is nothing definitive. On 18 July, we have ... Moscow will not prioritize an attack to seize Slovyansk in this stage of the operation but will instead focus on seizing Siversk and Bakhmut. However, this does not actually signal a "start". The rest of the article refers to activity in the region of Bakhmut and an apparent intention to capture it but does not resolve the question. The Daily Kos would state: Russia has been attacking Bakhmut since some time around July or August of 2022 (depending upon how close to the city the fighting is to count as fighting... While it is not a particularly reliable source, the quote does define the problem. In short, if there is no consensus in sources as to when the battle started (not even to a particular month) then we should not be representing in the infobox in a Wiki voice that there is a start date. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:03, 22 May 2024 (UTC)