ARTICLE
Russia ‘largely stalled’ in Bakhmut, shifting focus, UK says
The Star Advertiser/ Associated Press
3-25-2023 10:00 a.m. DST
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2023/03/25/breaking-news/russia-largely-stalled-in-bakhmut-shifting-focus-u-k-says/
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The top commander of Ukraine’s military said Saturday that his forces were pushing back against Russian troops in the long and grinding battle for the town of Bakhmut, and British military intelligence says Russia appears to be moving to a defensive strategy in eastern Ukraine.
“The Bakhmut direction is the most difficult. Thanks to the titanic efforts of the defense forces, the situation is being stabilized,” Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi said in a post on Telegram giving a synopsis of a telephone call with Adm. Sir Tony Radakin, Britain’s chief of defense staff.
The seven-month fight for Bakhmut, where Russian forces have closed in on three sides, is the longest battle of the war, with Russia deploying both regular soldiers and fighters of the mercenary Wagner Group.
Russian forces must go through Bakhmut to push deeper into parts of the eastern Donbas region, though Western officials say the capture of the city would have limited impact on the course of the war.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said in its latest intelligence update that “Russia’s assault on the Donbas town of Bakhmut has largely stalled. This is likely primarily a result of extreme attrition of the Russian force.”
Russia is likely shifting its focus toward two other sectors, which “suggests an overall return to a more defensive operational design after inconclusive results from its attempts to conduct a general offensive since January,” the U.K. ministry wrote on Twitter.
However, the Ukrainian military cautioned that a change in strategy was not yet clear and that Bakhmut remained Russia’s main point of attack for now. A spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern forces, Serhii Cherevaty, said the Russian forces were still hitting the town with artillery and airstrikes, although the number of daily clashes had dropped to fewer than 20, down from 30 to 50 not long ago.
“The coming week will tell,” Cherevaty said on Ukrainian television.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk province, where Bakhmut is located, said one civilian was killed in the fighting on Friday and another civilian was killed elsewhere in the province. Russian rockets hit the town of Kramatorsk during the night, but caused no injuries, Kyrylenko said.
On Saturday, Russian artillery struck Chasiv Yar, a city west of Bakhmut, and Toretsk to the south, killing two civilians, the Ukrainian presidential office said.
Two people were killed and six injured in Russian firing on the southern Kherson region, the local administration said.
ARTICLE
Russian soldiers are shocked by the ‘horrible reality’ in Ukraine and often regret going, says YouTuber who spoke to more than 200 after they were captured
Sophia Ankel
Mar 24, 2023, 1:03 PM
https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-regret-fighting-ukraine-says-youtuber-interviewing-pows-2023-3?op=1
-Volodymyr Zolkin interviews hundreds of Russian prisoners of war on his YouTube channel.
-He told Insider that there are common themes among captives: ignorance and regret.
-Zolkin said some captives want the publicity to assure their families they are alive.
Russia likes to portray its soldiers fighting in Ukraine as “strong and brave warriors,” Ukrainian Youtuber Volodymyr Zolkin told Insider.
“But we are disclosing the truth,” said Zolkin, describing his YouTube channel where he interviews prisoners of war captured by the Ukrainian army.
“We are showing soldiers who are lost, who don’t know what they are fighting for, or where they were going. We are sharing their stories,” he added. “No other project brings as much damage to Russian propaganda as ours.”
Zolkin, a former lawyer, became a YouTube hit last March when he started posting interviews with captured Russian soldiers.
The interviews, usually around an hour, show Zolkin and his friend Dmytro Karpenko talking to Russian soldiers about why they joined the war in Ukraine and how they were captured.
Interviewing captured soldiers is regarded as ethically questionable — they are being held against their will, and have strong reasons both to talk (from their captors) and not to (from their commanders back home).
Nonetheless, POW interviews quickly became a mainstay in the no-holds-barred propaganda war around the invasion of Ukraine, and offer a seemingly raw look at those on the sharp end of the conflict.
Speaking to Insider, Zolkin appeared to pre-empt some of the ethical concerns. He told Insider he is independent of the military, though he uses contacts in Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and intelligence services to facilitate the interviews.
He said he always asks the Russian soldiers, on camera, if they want to be interviewed beforehand. Hundreds have turned him down, he said.
Some captives want the publicity, Zolkin said, to assure their families they are alive, and help pressure Russian officials into including them in the regular prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine.
‘THEY START REGRETTING’
Zolkin told Insider that many of the Russian soldiers regret that they went to Ukraine, saying they had a completely false impression of what it would be like.
“Unfortunately, they are all in the vacuum of Russian propaganda, and nobody tells them what is actually going on,” Zolkin told Insider.
“And when they get here, when they see the horrible reality, when they see death, they do not perceive war as anything romantic as they used to see in the movies. Of course, at this moment, they start regretting.”
It’s an impression that has been widespread among Russian fighters, some volunteers and some of whom were conscripted.
Soldiers have previously said that, before the invasion, their commanders promised they would face little resistance and be welcomed by the locals, as the Associated Press reported last month.
Intercepted phone calls have also shown soldiers ruing their decision to fight, while video messages personally directed to Russian President Vladimir Putin show them pleading to go home.
FIGHTING RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA
Zolkin started the project in March 2022, in the early weeks of the war.
He said he was spurred to act after seeing social-media posts Russians in denial about what was happening.
(As Insider’s Mia Jankowicz reported at the time, many Ukrainians struggled to convince even their own families in Russia that they were being attacked.)
With help from his official contacts, Zolkin obtained the phone numbers of the relatives of Russian soldiers and then filmed himself speaking to them over the phone.
But, he said, many people still refused to believe — so he decided to film the conversations face-to-face.
His first such interview was on March 18 last year, in which a 20-year-old Russian soldier called Pavel Kravchenko admitted he went to war without understanding why.
The video went viral and sparked a surge in followers. At the time of writing, he has around 1.3 million subscribers on his main account YouTube and more than 100,000 on his English account.
Other interviewees include a soldier who said he joined the military to pay off debts he got from online gaming. Another said he was happy to surrender to avoid getting killed in battle.
Because of their content, some of these videos were taken down, or censored by YouTube, but company AIR Media Tech, helped Zolkin keep them afloat.
“We believe that Zolkin’s content plays a crucial role in fighting Russian propaganda not only in Ukraine and Russia but worldwide,” head of the impact, Vira Slyvinska, told Insider.
For Zolkin, the YouTube channel has become more than just an attempt to cut through Russian censorship.
“We want to create a tool for enhancing the exchange of the prisoners of war,” he told Insider.
He said many of the Russian soldiers he interviewed have also since been brought back home. It is not clear what happened to them next, or if they faced any repercussions for speaking to him.
“Russians, they don’t want to give Ukrainian POWs back, but when they see their soldiers exposed, they have no choice.”
Translations by Vira Slyvinska.
VIDEOS
1. 25 Mar: Ukrainian Drones WREAK HAVOC ON A RUSSIAN BASE | War in Ukraine Explained
Reporting from Ukraine
209K subscribers
3-25-2023 9:30 p.m. DST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhGeP_sCp7s
⚠️ Watch RFU in 18+ languages: https://www.youtube.com/@RFU/channels
I am a Ukrainian. My country has been invaded by Russia. In this video I will tell you what happened on the three hundred and ninety fifth day of the war.
Day 395: March 25
Last time I told you that Russians faced huge difficulties establishing a foothold near Vuhledar because Ukrainians have successfully adopted special artillery shells that scatter anti-armor mines. I also told you that Russian forces started summoning recently wounded soldiers for unspecified offensive actions during the last week of March.
The freshest reports suggest that Russians are not ready to launch another offensive operation. The Russian side recently released a video showing how they tried to suppress Ukrainian firing points and observation posts in the high-rise buildings by targeting them with Anti-Tank Guided Missiles. Unfortunately for Russians, facing such a high number of windows in front of them, where each can be used by Ukrainians at any time, suppressing fire and moving closer to the town proved to be extremely difficult.
Russians are also using artillery to shell the town. Russian sources reported that Russian forces primarily resort to devastating 240mm Tyulpans, which is the largest mortar system in use today. The footage from the Ukrainian side shows that even houses that were not hit directly have no windows and doors due to the shockwaves.
Russians also found that they could not destroy Ukrainian vehicles inside the town because they are usually parked close to the northern side of the building. Given that shells do not fall vertically, the houses proved to be a great shelter, even though they may be in plain view from Russian drones.
That is why Russians started to actively use different tactics. Recent footage reveals that Russians are using incendiary munitions to burn everything on the ground. Unlike shells, they fall vertically, which allows for targeting cars and armored vehicles that are not in the shelter.
Ukrainians are also attacking Russian positions. As most Russian attacks are currently being launched from Mykilske, it became an area with significant forces concentrations and plenty of targets.
Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized Brigade recently released a video showing how they identified and destroyed fuel storage in the southeastern part of the village, near the farm facilities, and also targeted a big building with Russian manpower. Ukrainian 79th AirAssault Brigade showed a video of how they destroyed a Russian tank in the vicinity of Vuhledar.
Finally, Ukrainian drone operators from the 72nd Mechanized Brigade showed how they hunted down armored vehicles on the Russian base in Mykilske: they managed to throw a grenade right in the open hatch of an armored vehicle and also chase down several moving armored vehicles that were driving in and near Mykilske.
Some Russian sources reported that judging by the concentration of Ukrainian forces in the area, it is possible that Ukrainians will exploit the fact that Russian manpower is exhausted from constant attacks and will conduct a counterattack on Mykilske, pushing Russians to the other side of the river.
Firstly, such actions would completely eliminate any possibility of a sudden resumption of offensive operations on Vuhledar, which will allow Ukrainians to reduce the number of troops in this direction and get more flexibility with their reserves.
Secondly, such actions would set better conditions for a counteroffensive operation in the direction of Volnovakha and Mariupol. Ukrainians had previously conducted a small counteroffensive here in summer, which involved fording the river, and they managed to establish a good bridgehead very rapidly, so the topography of the region should allow them to repeat the same success, especially as the quality of the country roads has noticeably improved, judging by the latest videos from Vuhledar.
Overall, the continuous use of ATGMs, artillery, and incendiary munitions by Russians and HIMARS and drones by Ukrainians suggests that both sides are trying to take advantage of the increased concentration of forces in the area and destroy as much enemy manpower and equipment as possible. If Ukrainians continue combining these efforts with localized counterattacks, and push Russians from Mykilske, then they can set suitable conditions for a counteroffensive operation and increase the number of options on the table by late spring or summer.”