[dbsights]

My guess: its a tactic designed to embolden the enemy and keep them committed to a failing strategy.

Bakhmut was a meat grinder, but as long as the hope of victory could be kept alive in the Ukrainian army, they would keep sending their troops to slaughter. So we got all of these videos about chaos & ammo running out on the Russian side. And the Ukrainians obligingly poured manpower into an almost-perfectly-surrounded killbox. Saw how that turned out.

I'd bet its the same deal with the current offensive, which has been similarly ruinous for Ukraine.

[everyone]

Ukraine was defending in an urban area. They were trading casualties favourably with Russian the entire time.

[dbsights]

Yes, they were defending in an urban area, but I think this matters less than you might expect. Russia's strategy was to saturate the Ukrainians with artillery, and they undoubtedly have superiority in this area. This kind of warfare basically negates the advantages of urban defence. Sure, it took a long time to make progress, but by design it limits the casualties of the attacker. I'd wager that most Ukrainians that died there never even saw a Russian solider.

Truthfully, no one really knows how many died (on either side), but Wagner stayed in the field vs 50-odd Ukr. brigades. How do you reconcile that with a favourable casualty ratio?

[lostmsu]

It does not make a lot of sense. If I were Ukrainian military, I'd stop fighting and just waited for the enemy to tear itself apart, only then advanced.

[jemmyw]

They'll probably want to keep the pressure on rather than letting the Russians get over it and regroup. The Ukrainians can't know the result of the infighting so keep going and hope the infighting improves their cause.