The loss of Bakhmut (yes it is an important transport hub) isn't important what is important is that about 13 % or more of the Ukrainian military is going to be encircled.
you are right about the time not favouring Ukrainian. One of the reasons why Russia performed so poorly was because the idiots went to war without mobilizing their troops in the correct way. From what I understand, the Russian military is meant to keep its units at strength during peacetime and restore them to full strength by mobilizing the reserves. Russia entered the war by not telling its own military that they were going to invade. The Russian military was neither mentally prepared for a battle nor prepared in military materially. A great deal of Russian equipment had been damaged by environmental factors and sold off for drinking money.
All of this led to the Russian military not only suffering a lot of casualties but also getting bogged down, thus leading the Russian military instructors to be sent to fill the role that reservists were meant to fill. The Russians sent the people who were meant to train other soldiers to the front line to strengthen the undermanned units. Without those instructors, the Russians were not able to give proper training to the mobilised reserves, which is why their mobilization has been terrible.
Of cause, all this is slowly being solved by Russia, which means that the great Russian meat grinder is getting ready to send wave after wave of Russian soldiers into the battlefield, which is why Ukraine want to end the war as fast as possible.
