Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of “pointlessly turning its own soldiers into cannon fodder,” reports Russia Today. “They throw (their soldiers) into our minefields, under our artillery fire and pretend they are not their own citizens. It’s unbelievable,” Putin said. The Washington Post reported that some NATO countries would prefer that Ukrainians continue to “fight and die” rather than “make a hasty peace.”
At a meeting with the acting head of the breakaway Luhansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, in the Kremlin on Wednesday, Putin described the situation on the front line as “stable” despite the ongoing attacks by the NATO-backed Ukrainian army.
As Ukraine throws its last strategic reserves, including the 82nd Airborne Brigade, into the “counteroffensive” in southern Ukraine, the situation remains difficult. The Russian Defense Ministry speaks of Ukrainian losses of around 700 men a day since the weekend. Assault units of the 46th Airborne Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have suffered “significant losses”, according to the Russian newspaper Izvestia.
The Russian armed forces still claim 50% of Robotyne to keep. Latest geolocated footage shows an attack on Ukrainian forces to the east of the village.
Experts interviewed by Izvestia are convinced that “in view of the catastrophic losses suffered by Kiev in its bungling counter-offensive, Ukraine has run out of personnel to launch further attacks.” reports TASS. “The Ukrainian units are now operating in small mobile groups, relying on the relatively high speed and security of the US-supplied Stryker armored personnel carriers, and are attempting to cut off the Russian positions in forward gear, with little or no success so far,” so the Izvestia.
‘The Ukrainian forces are trying to show at least some signs of success. They try to break through to Tokmak on the Sea of Azov, but they do not succeed. The enemy suffers heavy casualties. Everything indicates that they will soon have nothing left to attack. But at the moment we are seeing relentless, heavy fighting,” military expert Vasily Dandykin told Izvestia.
Ukrainian POW Sergei Rosko told his Russian captors that he was drafted off the streets and received only a cursory medical examination and military training before being sent to the front lines. NATO instructors told the Ukrainians that the “weakened” Russian army could be defeated quickly. Even before the Ukrainian soldiers reached the front line, they came under Russian artillery fire, Rosko said. “I was hit by an explosion, I don’t know exactly what. They just left me. When I came to, I crawled into the nearest trench where I lay for two or three days until Russian soldiers saw me, pulled me out of the trench, gave me medical attention and took me to the hospital,” Rosko said. He accused the Ukrainian commanders of “not being halfway to their positions” and preferring “to stay some distance from the line of contact.”
US and other Western officials complained that “Ukraine’s grueling counteroffensive is having trouble breaching entrenched Russian defenses, in large part because it has too many troops, including some of its best combat units, in the wrong places,” the New reported York Times.
“As casualties continued to mount and Russia still had a lead in troops and equipment, top American officers advised Ukraine to focus on breaching Russian minefields and other defenses, even if the Ukrainians lost more soldiers and equipment in the process ‘ she wrote New York Times.
“Even the most experienced units have been regrouped several times after heavy losses,” reports the NYT. These units “rely on a shrinking cadre of senior commanders. Some platoons are made up mainly of wounded soldiers who have returned to battle«.
In a video conference call Aug. 10, US Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley and his British counterpart, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, urged Ukraine’s senior military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, to “focus on one main front.” , writes the NYT, “instead of dividing its troops between the northern and southern fronts.” Russia has advanced on Kupyansk and Kharkiv to the north, while Ukraine is attempting to advance to Crimea and Mariupol to the south.
“Some analysts believe progress may be too late,” reports the NYT. “The fighting takes place on mostly flat, rough terrain that favors the defenders. The Russians are fighting from hidden positions that Ukrainian soldiers often don’t see until they are three feet away. Hours after the Ukrainians have cleared a minefield, the Russians sometimes fire another rocket, scattering more mines in the same spot.”
Ukraine’s main forces “could run out of air” in mid to late September, writes the NYT, as rain and mud set in. “While fighting could continue for months, American and other Western officials say the Ukrainian counteroffensive does not have enough decisive firepower to retake much of the 20 percent of the country that Russia holds.”
US officials admit that the Ukrainians “didn’t have the success they or their allies hoped for when the offensive began,” the NYT quotes General Milley as describing the last two months of the counteroffensive as “long, bloody and slow.” .
‘It’s taken longer than Ukraine expected,’ said Milley. “But they’re making limited progress.”
Die Washington Post reported in Aprilthat some NATO countries would prefer the Ukrainians to keep “fighting and dying” rather than making a “premature peace,” and that they rejected any outcome that could be sold as a “victory” for Moscow. “Itself a Ukrainian pledge not to join NATO may worry some neighbors,” WaPo reported. “This leads to an uncomfortable reality: for some in NATO, it is better to see the Ukrainians keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or too costly for Kiev and the rest of Europe.”
German translation: UncutNews