The West remains concerned about Ukraine's determination to hold Bakhmut of Donetsk region, according to a report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) for February 14.

“U.S. defense planners assess that Ukrainian forces are unable to simultaneously defend Bakhmut and launch a spring counteroffensive and have urged Ukraine to prioritize the spring counteroffensive over defending Bakhmut. ISW continues to assess that Ukraine’s decision to defend Bakhmut is likely a strategically sound effort despite its costs for Ukraine,” the message reads.

Analysts note that the Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut forced the occupiers to use Wagner's private military company and valuable Russian airborne forces to support the attrition offensive. “Ukraine’s defense of Bakhmut has forced the Kremlin to expend much of the Wagner Group as a force and commit high-value Russian airborne forces to sustain attritional advances.[7] Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut has degraded significant Russian forces and will likely set favorable conditions for a future Ukrainian counteroffensive … Ukraine’s defense of Bakhmut and undertaking an effort to set conditions for a counteroffensive are likely complementary, not mutually exclusive,” the ISW says.

At the same time, a number of American officials have signaled to Ukraine that Western security assistance to Ukraine is limited, while they stated that recent Western aid packages for Ukraine “represent Kyiv’s best chance to decisively change the course of the war,“ the report reads.

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) is reportedly recruiting convicts and mimicking the Wagner Group’s treatment of convicts as cannon fodder. In particular, these convicts specified that the Russian MoD recruited them after Wagner Group initially overlooked them, and even accused Russian forces of conducting deliberate friendly fire against the convicts.

The analysts say that Russian forces continued offensive actions in the Kupyansk direction of Kharkiv region and along the Svatove-Kreminna line o Luhansk region on February 14. They also continued ground attacks around Bakhmut and along the western outskirts of Donetsk city.

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in western Donetsk region or in Kherson, Mykolaiv, or western Zaporizhia regions on February 14.

“Russian ground forces on the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia have been reduced to one-fifth of their initial strength numbers before the invasion of Ukraine, supporting ISW’s longtime assessment that the Kremlin is not concerned about a NATO conventional military threat against Russia,” the message reads.

The ISW also reported that Ukrainian and Tatar partisan group reportedly conducted an improvised explosive device (IED) attack on a car carrying two Russian military personnel and two Russian special service representatives in occupied Nova Kakhovka on February 10.