Posted on 07/31/2023 9:55:05 AM PDT by Kazan
Over 28,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in the second month in the failing Ukrainian “counter-offensive“ with no air or artillery support, Russian Ministry of Defence Sergei Shoigu claimed. Shoigu previously put Ukrainians losses from the first month of the “counter-offensive“ at 26,000, as Gateway reported, putting the total Ukrainian dead since June 4 at 54.000. 1435 hapless Ukrainian young men died this weekend alone, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence.
“Over the past month, Ukrainian losses were up to twenty thousand eight hundred servicemen,” Shoigu claimed, speaking to the leadership of Russian Armed Forces: “20824 men and 2227 units of various weapons, to be precise, including 10 Leopard tanks, 11 U.S.-manufactured Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, 40 U.S.-manufactured M777 artillery systems and 50 self-propelled artillery systems from the U.K., the U.S., Germany, France and Poland.”
“For two days alone – 26 and 27 July – more than 400 Ukrainian servicemen, 31 tanks, including three German-manufactured Leopard and two French-manufactured tanks, as well as 32 armoured fighting vehicles were destroyed near Rabotino,” Shoigu claimed. “A total of 63 armoured vehicles were destroyed”.
“The command of the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) is desperately sending new troops into the assault on Russian positions”, Shoigu asserted, which was thwarted by the “competently constructed defences” of the Russian forces, he claimed. “A large-scale attempt by Ukrainian troops to break through Russian defences was thwarted in Orekhov direction.”
The Russian Ministry of Defence further claimed that 725 Ukrainian soldiers were killed on July 30 and 710 on July 31 in fighting on the South Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Krasny Liman, Kherson and Kupyansk fronts, putting the weekend death toll at 1435.
A video from Russian Ria Novosti TV claimed to show a single Russian tank in the Zaporozhye region stopping a column of 10 Ukrainian vehicles. 7 of the vehicles were destroyed by the Tank firing from the cover of a hedgerow, the rest were eliminated by artillery and Lancet drones, RT claimed. The video has not been independently verified.
According to the Russian state-controlled Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, the Ukrainian column included at least two tanks and five US-made MRAP M1224 MaxxPro vehicles. The Russian tank crew reportedly forced the Ukrainian group to enter a minefield, where some of their equipment was destroyed.
Russia and Ukraine allegedly reached a peace deal as early as March 2022, which was then torpedoed by the UK and US governments.
The big guy gets his cut so who cares how many people die.
Yellen said it’s good for the economy.
Hoho soldiers need to turn their weapons on whoever/whatever is sending them into the meat grinder. If they can’t figure that out, I can’t feel sorry for them.
The NY Times piece is by Charlotta Gall who at times writes realistic reports from the ground in Ukraine:
"In one battle in which his unit took part, Ukrainian soldiers attacked in 10 American-made MaxxPro armored vehicles, but only one came back, he said. He showed photographs of the damaged vehicles, ripped open and burned out, which he said had been hauled back to a repair base. The soldier declined to give his name for fear of getting into trouble with his superiors."
...
"The soldier lost a 22-year-old friend, Stas, in the shelling the day before, he said, adding that in just over a month, his battalion had suffered so many dead and wounded that only 10 men remained at the front line."
Next Gall speaks to a soldier from a different unit:
"Another soldier, who joined up last year and asked to be identified only by his first name, Oleksiy, said that his unit had taken heavy losses as Russian troops directed artillery fire and aerial bombs onto their positions. “We were shot like on a shooting range,” he said. “A drone was flying above us and correcting the artillery fire.” Their positions were in former Russian positions, hemmed in by minefields, he said, and the Russian forces were able to keep them pinned down and under constant drone surveillance.
"Soldiers were running out of ammunition and water but could only sneak in and out of their positions in ones or twos, on foot, when the light was poor just before dawn and at dusk," he said.
And a third case:
Interviews with Ukrainian soldiers and a review of military surveillance footage from a recent attack indicate that many Ukrainian units are sustaining heavy losses.
A group with special operations training, deployed last month to storm Russian positions in a village on the western part of the front, took such heavy casualties in four days of assaults that they had to pull out without success.
After their armored vehicles were largely destroyed by artillery strikes on the first day, they revised their plan to approach the village on foot through a tree line that had been mined. The Ukrainians cleared a narrow path with demining explosives and the first soldiers reached the Russian positions and dropped down into a trench.
Drone footage of the event showed what happened next. Explosions suddenly detonated inside the trenches and other strikes hit soldiers on the edge of the tree line. The video footage has been verified by The New York Times.
“The trenches were mined,” said the assault commander, who uses the call sign Voskres, short for Resurrection. “Our guys started jumping in the trenches and blowing up,” he added. The Russian forces were watching, and they remotely detonated the mines, he said.
Those who managed to avoid the mines came under attack from multiple Russian kamikaze drones. “It seemed like they had a drone for each person,” he said. “The amount of equipment the Russians have, had we known, it was like mission impossible.”
Several weeks later, the village remains in Russian hands.
“Wars are won based on industrial and technological capabilities not population differentials. Russia and Ukrain are both second world countries but Ukrain is backed by NATO and the EU thus ensuring it will never be outgunned or out etched. Russia on the other hand is friendless unless you think Iran is a reliable ally in which case God help you.”
Nay.
You assume the political will on each side is equal.
Here’s a new axiom for you: US support in a proxy war against the Russians or ragheads is ALWAYS LIMITED. You (beneficiary) are always on the cusp of abandonment and the hangman’s noose. It has always been so.
I believe the figure was dead and injured, quoted by Shoigu.
Capable of driving tanks and armored vehicles, flying planes, operating radar systems, maintaining and repairing a multitude of “donated” weapon systems? To command units in battle?
Ukraine may be able to replace tanks and armor, but the losses of its experienced people will take months, even years. You think the guys being ordered into the minefields and trenches can just wait?
This article quotes the success of a particular Uke brigade whose contraband social media has already released videos begging for support, for someone to come save them. No one is coming. Except maybe raw conscripts kidnapped off the streets or even in their homes and businesses by conscription squads.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/07/ukrainian-soldiers-tell-of-high-losses-and-few-wins.html
Battlefield surveillance is good, thanks to drones. Then add in intercepted communications and other sources.
The daily “ clobber count” of dead/WIA lost in battles as briefed by the Russian MoD is sometimes 1,000 or more per day. The average is given at 750.
There are 30 days in a month, so do the math.
First those numbers are preposterous
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Not when Vlad’s artillery hammer is operating 24/7. Viewing the many videos posted by Ukie soldiers ( not to be found on western MSM outlets ) , they state the devastating artillery, and what I find is the reports coming from Ukie hospitals, nearly all casualties are artillery shrapnel, and many state they never even seen an Ivan.
The same reports came from German soldiers nearing the end, the US divisional artillery was devastating. In fact, when Patton was asked what won the war- he replied our ARTILLERY.
Artillery, the King of Battle.
http://battlekings.org/quotes.htm
Post war analysis will again verify Artillery as the King. Our Pentagon has even acknowledged Vlads 24/7 relentless artillery……and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.
I just had the same thought. My wife is big fan on the 90 Fiance` program.
Well, OK then.
History, particularly recent history, teaches that its darn near impossible to subdue a population by invasion. About the only way to ensure it is to completely wipe out or enslave the indigenous people. That is why, and I have said this from the beginning, Russia can never win this war, any more than we (or they) could ever ‘win’ Afghanistan. There always has to be an exit strategy and that is not at all in Russia’s plan.
We saw early on in the invasion that Ukrainians of all ages were playing all sorts of roles in defense of their country. Even older men were welding tank traps, repairing vehicles, mounting guns on ‘technicals’, etc.
My 10% number was a very very conservative number. Millions of Ukrainians will be the bane of the russian occupiers for as long as they remain in Ukraine. Ukrainians ask for help to shorten the time they have to endure their occupiers. But I doubt, based on several other historical cases, that outside support going away will alter their resolve. That will just make it last longer.
She could never lead us astray.
Transitory deaths...
Yeah, transitory. That’s the ticket...
Unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, in this case there are millions of people in Donbass and Crimea who welcome the Russians as liberators from a regime in Kiev that has treated them ( and continues) with contempt and cruelty.
The few times the nazi-nationalist mask has slipped in public, they have openly discussed the “ problem” they expect in dealing with a large population of Russians. They expect to deport or deprogram them, or worse.
There is no “ exit strategy” for Russia to leave millions of Russian people trapped by artificially drawn political lines on a map as “ Ukrainian’…to the mercy of Ukrainian ultra nationalists.
Had the Ukrainians accepted the Minsk accords in good faith ( they never did) these oblasts would have remained as part of Ukraine but with their ethnically Russian population guaranteed political rights, freedom of religion, and freedom to use the Russian language and teach it to their children.
Ukraine would not have been the only country in Europe to have more than one official language ( tiny Switzerland has 4) nor to have certain areas and regions living within a State but with their own traditions as ethnic minorities.
But a virulent form of nationalism has grown in Ukraine, based on an ideology of racial purity and supremacy that emerged with Bandera’s OUN before WW2, grew in power and hatred with the OUN and embraced nazi collaboration to carry out internal purges of minorities, Jews, Poles, during the war,
and was then embraced by the West after 1945 as a tool vs the “ Communists” which the OUN nationalists continued to slaughter within Ukraine, in great numbers , with Western approval.
Ironically…as they are being encouraged to do today with our weapons.
So your analogy isn’t very useful here.
People need to take a real hard look at what kind of “ democratic” regime in Kiev we are really supporting in Ukraine, how this current regime and cocaine shrimp puppet Zelensky (“ I spoke Russian until I got elected, nevermind, I cant be a nazi because my father was Jewish!”) was installed and came to power, who he is afraid to ever disobey, how unlikely it is that these influential controlling ultranationalists embedded in the govt and military and internal security apparatus….will ever accept Ukraine as a multiethnic state…
and why we would think that’s OK.
We carved Kosovo out of Serbia as a separate Republic to protect a minority ethnic group. And bombed the crap out of Serbia to force it to happen. We keep promising the Kurds that as our allies, we support them carving out territory from 3-4 other States to create an independent Republic to protect their ethnic and minority rights. And invaded Syria and Iraq in support. Yet we condemn Russia for doing the same for millions of Russian ethnics on its own border,
You know you are relating Moscow fictions. The Donbas has millions who are patriotic Ukrainians. We see it, not only in those who wear Ukrainian military uniforms but also among those in the temporarily occupied areas who serve up human intel about Russian positions and ammo depots. That is how that abandoned brewery in Alchevsk went boom and continued to explode for three hours after being struck.
It is without any shadow of a Doubting Thomas, the Donbas is NOT a majority “ethnic Russian”. It is a majority Russian-speaking (although many small agricultural villages speak Ukrainian in the Donbas and even east of the Donbas in Russian areas near Rostov). Zelensky is also a Russian speaker.
Don’t you get tired of being a tool for the KGB 24-year dictator?
I won’t dispute your post. I also don’t think it solves the problem. My premise that this invasion by Russia cannot be won still stands. You may make similar argument that Ukraine also cannot win. I would not dispute that argument. Not winning and losing can be two very different outcomes.
And we are another day closer to the day the US Deep Swamp abandons Ukraine.
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