It's false imagery on so many levels. This is not guilty Ukraine being marshaled by legal authority Russia into a defeat at Bakhmut. Further, there is generally no risk to an executioner to hanging a convict with a noose. If, on the other hand, the executioner is the guilty one and you're way more likely to die executing someone with a noose, then yeah, that would make more sense because that's the truth of the matter according to what I would call a consensus of military analysis like the ISW, UK MoD, and CSIS on the situation at Bakhmut. This article ignores the bigger picture of the war which is strategically attritional and gaining ground in Bakhmut is not how you win a war of attrition.