20 Jun, 2023 18:44

Ukraine loses ‘hundreds’ of men in failed assault – Russian MoD

Captured troops told Russian soldiers that they had been misled by their commanders

The Ukrainian militarylost “dozens” of pieces of Western hardware and hundreds of troops in an unsuccessful attackon Russian positions in Zaporozhye Region, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday.

The previous night’s assault came as part of a far wider Ukrainian counteroffensive raging across the entire frontline from Zaporozhye to Donetsk.

The attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s (AFU) 65th Mechanised Brigade was repelled by the troops of Russia’s 58th Combined-Arms Army and Vostok-Akhmat battalion. The Russian Defense Ministry did not say exactly how many Ukrainian troops were killed or wounded, instead placing the losses in the “hundreds.”

In a separate statement on Tuesday, the head of Russia’s State Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, announced that Kiev had lost 900 soldiers across the entire front to deaths and injuries in the preceding 24 hours.

According to the ministry,captured Ukrainian servicementold Russian troopsthat they had been “deceived” by their commanders with promises of reinforcements and misledabout the true strength of Russian forces in the area. “Otherwise,” the ministry said in a statement, “there would be no one willing to launch an offensive.”

In video footage released by the ministry, one capturedUkrainian described a situation of “complete incompetence” on the ground, in which brigades operate alongside one another with no cross-communication and commanders knowinglysend Western Leopard tanksand Bradley infantry fighting vehiclesinto the range of Russian anti-tank missiles.

The captured soldierclaimed that his commanders have failed to remove bodiesfrom Ukrainian lines, and thatsome corpses have been left to decompose since the counteroffensive began almost two weeks ago. “It’s just a nightmare,” the soldier said. “A real meat grinder.”

Ukraine’s long-promised counteroffensive began on June 5 with a failed attack on Russian positions near Donetsk. Wave after wave of attacks followed, all of which Russian forces managed to rebuff before their multi-layered warren of trenches, minefields, and fortifications could be breached.

As of last week, Moscow put Ukrainian losses at around 7,500 men and 30% of its Western-supplied tanks and armored vehicles. Kartapolov put the losses closer to 20,000, but did not explain his sources.

Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Anna Malyar, said on Tuesday that while the situation on the battlefield “is quite difficult” at the moment,Kiev’s “biggest blow” against Russian forces “is yet to come.”

(Their promises are getting hollow, but we’ll see)

https://www.rt.com/russia/578363-ukraine-counteroffensive-losses-hundreds/

20 Jun, 2023 22:07

Pentagon ‘factored in’ Ukrainian casualties

Washington still believes that Kiev’s offensive can be successful

The US military believes that Ukraine has everything it needs to succeed on the battlefield, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Tuesday.

“We have accounted for losses. We know that there’s going to be losses on the battlefield. That’s the unfortunate part of this war, but it’s something that we’ve seen the Ukrainians overcome from the beginning,” Singh said, responding to a question about Ukrainian casualties in men and equipment.

“We know this is going to be a hard fight. We know that it’s going to take time,” Singh added. “We are confident that the Ukrainians have what they need – they have the combat power – they have the ability to be successful in their counteroffensive operations.”

Singh’s comments come after two weeks of heavy fighting on the Zaporozhye front, in which the Ukrainian brigades trained by the West failed to reach the main Russian defensive line, while losing thousands of men and hundreds of armored vehicles, according to Moscow. The losses have included German-made Leopard tanks and US-made Bradleys.

On Monday, the New York Times reported that some cemeteries in western Ukraine were digging up old graves to make room for new burials amid the “seemingly countless funerals.”

Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Anna Malyar said on Tuesday that it was “quite difficult” for troops to advance, but that theoperation’s success should not be measured in territorial gains. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has acknowledged that Ukrainians faced “a difficult terrain” and “dug-in Russian resistance.”

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed that Ukraine had lost more than 600 armored vehicles, including 186 tanks, in less than two weeks of fighting and “won’t be able to wage war like that for long” relying solely on supplies from the West.

At this rate, Ukraine will exhaust its offensive capability by July, Russian lawmaker Andrey Kartapolov said in a TV appearance on Tuesday.

“Every tactic they have used has not worked,”he said on the ‘Solovyov Live’ show. The Ukrainian military, he added, had already lost around 20,000 of the 50,000 troops it had reportedly trained for the offensive, with 900 dead and wounded in just the past 24 hours.

Kartapolov commanded the Russian expeditionary force in Syria between December 2016 and March 2017, overseeing the second liberation of Palmyra. He retired in 2021 with the rank of a four-star general, and currently chairs the State Duma’s defense committee.

(Does the Pentagon ever regret lying to them? This is plan evil!)

https://www.rt.com/news/578368-ukraine-pentagon-losses-offensive/