What if Stalingrad hadn't been named after Josef Stalin?

If that city hadn't been identified with Adolf Hitler's arch-nemesis, then perhaps the fuhrer wouldn't have been quite as obsessed with capturing it — or at least not so obsessed as to lose 300,000 soldiers and any chance Nazi Germany had of winning World War II.

But at least Stalingrad was an industrial city, a major inland port on the Volga River that was a vital transportation artery for Soviet war production and home to a half-million people. Thus capturing or holding Stalingrad had some strategic value.

What exactly is the value of the city of Bakhmut?

It is one of many cities in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. Before Russia's invasion last year it had a population of just 71,000. It has a nice winery, and a couple of highways pass through it.

But is Bakhmut an objective worth 30,000 Russian casualties and thousands of Ukrainian casualties whom Kyiv can ill afford to lose?

Western experts are struggling to understand why both sides are pouring enormous resources — and prestige — into the Battle of Bakhmut.

"Both sides have really been going at it there," Dara Massicot, an expert on Russia's military at the Rand Corporation think tank, said during a recent symposium.

"They've taken a lot of casualties. They've expended a lot of ammunition," Massicot added. "It's like becoming like a Stalingrad except for without the importance of Stalingrad."

Capturing Bakhmut would "give the Russians a launch point from which to drive northwest along the E40 highway to Slovyansk, or north to the town of Siversk," according to The Washington Post.

But to what end? "Russian forces have tried and failed to take these cities in the past," The Post said. Ukraine has already dug trench lines behind Bakhmut, so any Russian attempt to exploit the capture of Bakhmut would be hindered or blocked by fresh Ukrainian defenses.

Hitler may have been fixated on capturing the city named after Stalin. The Kremlin may be fixating on Bakhmut because of internal rivalries.

Instead of the regular Russian soldiers whose performance in Ukraine has been disappointing, the siege of Bakhmut has been waged largely by the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization with deep ties to the Putin government.

Much like the Red Army's penal battalions in World War II, Wagner is using convicts as cannon fodder to wear down the Ukrainian defenders with haphazard attacks — launched with the threat of execution for those who retreat or surrender — and then sending in better-trained contract soldiers to finish the job.