Senior Ukrainian officers have, for at least the last seven months, questioned the military imperative behind their orders to hold the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Russia's private military company, Wagner, now claims to completely control the city, though Ukraine has partially disputed the report, saying it clings to a portion of the city's western edge.
If the fight for Bakhmut is indeed drawing to a close, it brings an end to a brutal, grinding campaign that dragged on for months.
Every single senior Ukrainian officer I have spoken to since October last year said the city has no strategic value. Some questioned even the morality of continuing to defend it, in the face of intense Russian attacks.
Others recognized the symbolic importance of taking a stand — particularly as it became such a focus of media attention — and a test of political will in Kyiv, where President Volodymyr Zelensky committed his country to an indefinite defense of it.
Once famous for producing the best sparkling wine in Ukraine, Bakhmut is now notorious, and described by fighting men on both sides as the "meat grinder."
Ukrainian forces are now, from a military perspective, likely to be in a stronger position than they were before their withdrawal from the center of the town.
They control significant territory on Bakhmut's northern and southern flanks, and the high ground to the west. Meanwhile, everything in what remains of Bakhmut — and that’s almost nothing — is now a free-fire zone for Ukraine.
Russian attempts to invest it with troops will make Putin's soldiers easy targets for Ukrainian artillery and rocket attacks.
In short, Wagner's declared "victory" in the small Ukrainian city may be pyrrhic — won at too great a cost to be worthwhile.