Posted on 08/05/2022 6:03:21 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
Volodymyr Saldo, who was appointed by the Kremlin to lead Ukraine's southern Kherson region after it was seized during Vladimir Putin's war, has been hospitalized as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to retake the strategic city.
The official, whom Russia declared "head of the Kherson civic military administration" after gaining control of the territory in the first phase of its invasion, claimed Thursday that he had been hospitalized, and that he was delegating his "authority" to his "acting executive," Sergei Eliseev—a former officer with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).
In a statement on his Telegram channel, Saldo said that following a meeting with the Kremlin-installed government of the Kherson region, the "minister of health" approached him, and after "looking at my appearance, began to insist on an immediate medical examination."
"Of course, I refused, but the minister brought doctors to the office, who, after doing an examination, insisted on immediate hospitalization. After discussing with the Prime Minister and colleagues, I decided to agree with the doctors' proposals," Saldo added.
He said Eliseev would perform his duties during his absence. According to Latvia-based independent news outlet Meduza, Eliseev formerly served in the FSB and has worked in the government of Russia's Kaliningrad region.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
FSB has fully taken over administration of Kherson city now that all Russian escape routes from Kherson to Crimea have been cut off by Ukrainian HIMARS strikes.
Saldo the collaborator is no longer useful as the Russian occupation of Kherson continues to disintegrate into chaos.
Russian medical poisoning?
Wanna bet Kherson Collaborator Saldo doesn’t wake up from his “medically induced coma”?
Evening Update: Comatose Kherson Collaborator Saldo transferred to a Moscow hospital for his “recovery”. This keeps getting better!
Ukraine SitRep - Casualties Leak - Ukraine Admits Russian Breakthrough - Southern Front Paralysis
There is an report on Ukraine making the rounds that was allegedly written by the higher command of the Ukrainian army and leaked from somewhere.
Dr.Snekotron @snekotron - 12:50 UTC · Aug 5, 2022
Ukrainian channels are discussing what might be a leaked data from AFU General Staff:
- The AFU are only at 43-48% strength
- medical workers at their limit
- small arms and armor are not enough
- 191 thousand soldiers were killed and wounded (only AFU, not including others)
- there is not enough hydraulics and liquid nitrogen for M777 howitzers
- no one cares about the missing - there are no statistics
- the equipment transferred by the West is running out
- western weapons are operated by amateurs, since there are no qualified specialists
- no way to repair weapons on the spot due to the lack of spares and specialists - everything is sent to Poland
BTW, even with this dire report, I would caution against predicting a decisive break in morale. As with Peski, the walking wounded are sent straight back into the trenches
There are some pictures of documents written in cyrillic script attached to the above tweet.
The documents look legit. The overall numbers and issues mentioned seem plausible to me. The high number of casualties (plus the missing) is not astonishing. It would be astonished though if the Russian army and its allies have more than one tenth of those. This is mostly an artillery war and the Russian side has had a vast superiority in guns and missiles.
Ukraine is still dreaming of a counter-offensive in the south:
Ukraine said the Russian offensive in the east looked like an attempt to force it to divert troops from the south where Kyiv's forces are trying to retake territory and destroy Russian supply lines as a prelude to a wider counter-offensive.
"The idea is to put military pressure on us in Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk over the next few weeks ... What is happening in the east is not what will determine the outcome of the war," Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in an interview on YouTube.
Arestovych is of course wrong. The war was decided in the east when the Ukrainian military followed its bosses orders and moved everything it had to that front. That gave the Russian artillery the chance to take it apart. The Ukrainian tactic, ordered from above, was to hold onto every position until it was completely destroyed. A more mobile defense would likely have been more effective and would have cost less casualties.
The units that Ukraine pulled back from Donbas and has send down to Kherson for its 'million men' offensive were already heavily mauled. They have now been waiting for weeks for the offensive to launch. Meanwhile Russian missiles have hit several of those repositioned units and caused a high numbers of fresh casualties. The removal of Ukrainian artillery from the Donetsk line allowed for the breakthrough at that line.
The long time it took for all that repositioning to happen has also given time for the Russian forces to strengthen its troops around Kherson. There are by now sufficient numbers for the Russian's to launch their own offensive in the area.
General Hromov said Russia might launch its own offensive in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson to try to win back momentum in the war after building up its forces there. The general got that right. The Russian offensive in the south may launch as early as next week.
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