Aren’t you contradicting yourself?
Bakhmut gives Russia an advantageous position. It doesn't give such position to Ukraine. Denyning an advantage to the enemy is not equal to having an advantage because what is advantageous to one is not necessarily advantageous to the other.
Capturing Vuhledar, Bakhmut, Jampil/Siversk and Kupyansk allows Russia to establish a continuous sustainable frontline. Therefore Russia will not stop until they capture these positions because it is the last element of consolidating control over captured territory. That puts Ukraine in a position where they will be forced to keep fighting as long as they hold those positions. So the only thing that can be achieved in Bakhmut is attrition of Russian manpower and ammunition.
Success there is defined by ratios of attrition. The threshold ratios are 1:4 in terms of manpower and whatever is the ratio for unsustainable munitions use by Russia. Unless Ukraine can maintain these ratios it will exhaust itself faster than Russia will and will lose the war even if it wins the battle for Bakhmut. But how does Ukraine sustain the ratios? With external help which is conditional.
A more advantageous strategy for Ukraine would be to simultaneously withdraw from those positions and tentatively allow Russia to capture their objective and strike at Melitopol, threaten the southern front and using seaborne flank along Kinburn peninsula establish two vectors of attack toward Crimea.
Crimea is the decisive point of the war and the main strategic objective. If Ukrainian forces reach border with Crimea Russia will have to negotiate because even if they capture all of Ukraine east of Dnipro but lose Crimea it's a strategic defeat. This is why to achieve this Ukraine should sacrifice territory in eastern Ukraine which is either impossible to recapture without prior Russian withdrawal like pre-invasion DPR/LPR or irrelevant like northern Luhansk oblast.
The figures indicate pre-invasion population - total of 261k outside of LPR.
This area also doesn't have any identified natural resources of note. It is the least valuable part of Ukraine and the most pro-Russian region other than Crimea and DPR/LPR. It's also ruined by war. Rational choice is to let Russia have it and strike where the strike will matter.
The push for Crimea is easy. What is hard is pushing for Crimea while simultaneously pushing along the rest of the front. What is even harder probably is explaining how you give up a lot to capture a little, especially after all that talk about genocide etc but that's politics.
Strategically as soon as the western bank of Dnipro was evacuated in November Ukraine should have struck at Tokmak even at the cost of taking high casualties. The consequence of delay is this distribution of defensive positions - from 23 Jan 2023:
Tokmak breaks up the railway line from Crimea and opens the M-14 near Melitopol (the road to Berdyansk and Mariupol) to GMLRS effectively disrupting the logistics for majority of the front between Zaporozhia and Donetsk and forcing Russia to disperse the supply lines across the very poor local road network.
Once Tokmak is captured it opens the entire flank toward Energodar and allows to push toward Melitopol. That would make Tokmak into a similar target that Bakhmut is currently - a target that Russia must recapture to consolidate its defensive lines. But Tokmak would be easier to defend than Bakhmut because while Ukraine retains depth Russian forces have very little of it.
red - current frontline
orange - speculative minimum-gain frontline after capturing Tokmak
magenta - approximate max range for GMRLS from "safe" positions.
Southern front also would benefit from better air defenses compared to eastern front while Russia would have to keep their SAMs out of range.
The capture of that area also explains Russian position.
Loss of Melitopol by day 2 of the invasion (the fighting in the city lasted until 1 Mar but the roads around it were taken by 27 Feb) is the war's biggest blunder followed by loss of Nova Kakhovka on day 1. Russian forces couldn't break through the defensive lines on the DPR boundary and Mariupol was only surrounded when it was attacked from the west by forces coming from Melitopol and Berdyansk (taken 27 Feb).
Ukraine not only had not reinforced the border with Crimea to prevent fast crossing by land but had no units stationed in Melitopol. Instead a battalion was stationed in Novoalekseyivka near border as well as in Skladovsk and near Nova Kakhovka to the west. Those units were outmaneuvered and dispersed in the first hours and then Russian forces simply overrun the area through sheer initiative. With proper defense they would have never been able to pass Nova Kakhovka, Kherson and Melitopol without heavy fighting over many days. Compare with advances through DPR/LPR boundary. The collapse of southern front is entirely on Poroshenko's and Zelensky's military
genius.
But what that means is that as you look at the map you miss the fact that the
only reason why Russia was able to capture that area was because there was no meaningful resistance. Compare with 1st Tank Army advance to Izyum which took ~2 weeks. Ukraine had to defend everywhere else including west of Mikolaiyv and consequently the frontline stabilized around 20 Mar where it is today and then it took a while before forces were amassed on both sides.
Melitopol is the most vulnerable direction after west Dnipro is cleared and it should be prioritized even without Crimea's importance for the war.
Obviously I can be missing important data on Bakhmut or it may be a shaping operation to draw away Russian forces from another direction but
other than that it's a strategic error. Hopefully this answers your question.
to retrofit the AMRAAM on the MiG-29 seems like a waste of time.
It's not. Ukraine has only SARH. Either evade or keep target. With ARH you can do both.
Tracking range of N019 is 60km vs. 3m2 RCS. Su-27/30/34/25 have 10m2+ RCS. Only Su-35 had it reduced. Being able to target bombers and evade changes a lot.
R-77 doesn't give extra range for safety so R-37 is needed but Su-35 and MiG-31 can't fly indefinitely so AMRAAM equates the field
a lot.
The only change is a translator to feed data from radar to missile and back and some mechanical mods. It's not hard. Just
unprofitable. Should have been done months ago. See above for "strategic errors".
