You should read some more about Bakhmut. As with Mariupol and Popasna (probably others) the city has logistic and strategic value. As Ukraine's defenses fail, the West downplays the importance to lessen the blow to moral when the city is lost.

Bakhmut has become a "meat grinder" (I have a fucking horrendously visceral response to that term) or "fire bag" (as described by a western general) for the Russians -because Bakhmut (very like Popasna) is an important logistics hub.

The Ukrainians continue to feed soldiers into the "fire bag" because they know that if they lose it, Russia will fan out from Bakhmut like they did from Poposna some months ago.

The Russians are using their 9:1 artillery advantage to very, very slowly advance in/around Bakhmut with minimum human casualties. Why hurry when your enemy is destroying itself in concentrated form when you go slow? It is horrible. Simply horrible.

The Russians lost a huge political battle in Kherson, but not a military one. They pulled back from the East with virtually no losses to men and equipment, and since then have been bombing the shit out of the eastern part of Kherson, not allowing the Ukrainians to rebuild without extremely heavy losses. Not dissimilar to Bakhmut, but much more similar to Kharkov, Russia trades ground for saving lives.

I don't know what Russian morale is like in general or specifically in Kherson. If it were my life on the line, I'd rather be pulled back to a safer military position than told to hold a dangerous military position for political purposes.