The Tarbabys Blog

The New York Times

Tending Russia’s Dead as They Pile Up in Ukraine

Valerie Hopkins – May 30, 2022

KHARKIV, Ukraine — They lie in white and black bags at 20 degrees below zero Celsius, but the stench is still overpowering. Filled with the bodies of 62 Russian soldiers, the bags are stacked in a refrigerated train car in a secret location on the outskirts of Ukraine’s second-largest city. A spry, elderly train worker spun open the vaultlike door to reveal the bloodied bags as the scent hung in the damp air.

“We are collecting these bodies for sanitary reasons, because dogs have been eating them,” said a Ukrainian soldier who would only give his call sign, Summer. “Eventually, we will return them to their loved ones.”

Summer said many of the bodies had been lying in the open for a month or longer before his unit found them. His two-man team works to identify the soldiers by their faces, tattoos and belongings. They also take a DNA swab from each corpse to determine whether any are potential war-crimes suspects.

In the gloom of the darkened car, a few traces of humanity, of the soldiers who once brought Russia’s war to Ukraine, can be made out. A pair of boots caked in mud peek out of one bag. Off in the corner, the collar of a camouflage jacket is visible through an opening, but not a face.

Summer’s colleague, who refused to use even his first initial because of the sensitivity of the topic, said they were the only two men in their unit tasked with finding and preserving the bodies of the enemy. He said identifications were possible about 50% of the time, while in other cases, the corpses were too deteriorated. Most of the bodies had been found in villages around Kharkiv.

“This is the best work in the world,” he said of the grim satisfaction to be found in collecting the corpses of the invader.

In recent weeks, the Ukrainian army successfully counterattacked Russian forces, pushing them farther from Kharkiv and giving the city a sense of calm, at least until shelling resumed again Wednesday.

When the Russians retreated, they left some of their fallen behind, and as Kharkiv inhabitants have begun returning tentatively to villages that had been in the line of fire, some have found the bodies in their homes or have stumbled across them elsewhere.

The train attendant sleeps in the wagon next to the refrigerated car, keeping guard over the corpses. Colleagues have taken on similar duties in other cities, among them Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro, where other refrigerated wagons hold hundreds of bodies.

Ukrainian authorities have complained that the Kremlin has been reluctant to engage on the subject of repatriating its dead.

Ukraine says 30,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion began Feb. 24; those numbers are impossible to independently verify, and Russia rarely gives casualty tolls. Last week, a British intelligence assessment put the estimated Russian losses at half that number. Thousands more Russians are missing or are being held by the Ukrainians, Western intelligence agencies estimate.

Russia has not released casualty figures since late March, when it said 1,351 soldiers had died and 3,825 had been wounded. Estimates based on publicly available evidence suggest that well over 400 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in one incident alone this month in northeastern Ukraine.

Last week, for the first time since Russia invaded, President Vladimir Putin visited a military hospital in Moscow to visit wounded soldiers. Donning a white lab coat, he called everyone serving in Ukraine “heroes.” Putin also announced further compensation increases for people serving there, a sign he may be trying to tamp down bubbling public discontent over casualties. Russia also abolished upper age limits for signing a military service contract.

Ukraine has not shared its own military casualty information, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week at Davos that as many as 100 servicemen might be dying every day in the brutal fighting in the eastern Donbas region.

Allies of Ukraine have also been reluctant to comment on the casualties the country’s troops have sustained, but U.S. intelligence agencies estimated in mid-April that between 5,500 and 11,000 soldiers had been killed and more than 18,000 wounded.

One of the soldiers handling the Russian corpses in Kharkiv said he hoped Ukraine’s decision to safeguard Russia’s war dead may improve its chances of getting its own back from behind enemy lines.

“For me,” he said, “it is most important that we bring the bodies of our boys back to their families. So we treat these bodies respectfully.”

The Hill

Russia likely experiencing ‘devastating’ losses of mid-level officers, UK says

Mychael Schnell – May 30, 2022

The United Kingdom’s defense ministry on Monday said Russia has likely experienced “devastating” losses among its mid- and junior-level military officers during its invasion of Ukraine.

“Russia has likely suffered devastating losses amongst its mid and junior ranking officers in the conflict,” the ministry wrote in an intelligence update posted on Twitter.

“Brigade and battalion commanders likely deploy forwards into harm’s way because they are held to an uncompromising level of responsibility for their units’ performance. Similarly, junior officers have had to lead to the lowest level tactical actions, as the army lacks the cadre of highly trained and empowered non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who fulfill that role in Western forces,” it added.

The intelligence update comes more than three months after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Russia has gained control of a number of regions, namely the Luhansk and Donetsk areas, the BBC noted, but Ukraine has defended other regions from the offensive.

The U.K. on Monday said Russia’s significant loss of its “younger professional officers will likely exacerbate its ongoing problems in modernising its approach to command and control.”

“More importantly, battalion tactical groups (BTGs) which are being reconstituted in Ukraine from survivors of multiple units are likely to be less effective due to a lack of junior leaders,” the ministry added.

Additionally, the British intelligence said the decreased number of “experienced and credible” personnel will likely lead to a decrease in morale, in addition to poor discipline.

“With multiple credible reports of localise mutinies amongst Russia’s forces in Ukraine, a lack of experienced and credible platoon and company commanders is likely to result to a further decrease in morale and continued poor discipline,” the intelligence update reads.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last week said Russian President Vladimir Putin “made a big, strategic mistake” when he launched an invasion of Ukraine, which sparked the beginnings of a NATO expansion, with Finland and Sweden looking to join the military alliance.

Both countries have submitted written applications to join the 30-member bloc.

“I will not speculate about his feelings, but he made a big, strategic mistake,” Stoltenberg said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“One of the stated purposes with this invasion of Ukraine was to get less NATO on Russia’s borders. … And now he gets more NATO enlargement,” he added.

Reuters

UK says Russia suffers devastating losses among lower-ranked officers

May 30, 2022

LONDON (Reuters) – Russia appears to have suffered devastating losses amongst mid- and junior-ranking officers in its conflict with Ukraine, raising the prospect of weaker military effectiveness in future, Britain’s defence ministry said on Monday.

Brigade and battalion commanders were probably deploying to the most dangerous positions while junior officers have had to lead low-level tactical actions, the ministry said on Twitter in its latest Defence Intelligence update.

“With multiple credible reports of localised mutinies amongst Russia’s forces in Ukraine, a lack of experienced and credible platoon and company commanders is likely to result (in) a further decrease in morale and continued poor discipline,” it said.

The loss of younger officers was likely to exacerbate Russia’s problems in modernising its military command and control, the ministry said.

“More immediately, battalion tactical groups which are being reconstituted in Ukraine from survivors of multiple units are likely to be less effective due to a lack of junior leaders,” it said.

Russian forces intensified attacks on Monday to capture Sievierodonetsk, a key city in Ukraine’s southeastern Donbas region which Moscow is targeting having failed to take the capital Kyiv early in the war.

(Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Kate Holton)

Ukrayinska Pravda

Security Service of Ukraine: Russians ready to kill their generals that force soldiers to fight

Valentyna Romanenko – May 30, 2022

The Security Service of Ukraine has evidence that Russian contract soldiers refuse to participate in the offensive because they are suffering significant losses.

Source: Conversation intercepted by the Security Service of Ukrainehttps://www.youtube.com/embed/irHbRdvsdto

Details: According to the intelligence service, Russian contract soldiers in the Donetsk region have come close to shooting their general (district commander) Valeriy Solodchuk and his bodyguards, who arrived to quell the riot and force the “rejecters” to continue fighting.

The soldiers refused to obey the order and were ready to blow up the “high ranking guests.” Therefore, the Russian general shamefully fled from the front line.

A member of the Russian military complains in a conversation with his wife that only a third of their brigade (over 600 people) remains, the rest have been killed or wounded.

Quote: “We have almost the entire battery refusing to fight. He [the general – ed.] began to wave the barrel, shoot: ‘I, he says, will kill you if you, do not f*ing go there! … ‘ That was that. Here’s a kid: ‘Go on, he says, kill us!’ F*ck, he got a grenade, pulled a pin out and says: ‘Come on, shoot me! He says, let’s explode here together, he says.’

That’s that. Then the special forces also started poking at us with barrels, we poked the barrels back at them. In short, we all nearly f*ing shot each other. He got into his car, left… After these f*ing words, I don’t want to stay here at all!”

Previously: The Security Service of Ukraine has released a hotline number – 2402 – for Russian occupiers seeking a way out of the war.

We remind you that the 90-day timeline set by the Putin regime for the so-called “special operation” runs out at the end of May. Russian contract soldiers who came to fight in Ukraine in February have grounds to “legally” leave the service. According to the Security Service of Ukraine, Russian contract soldiers are dreaming of leaving Ukraine.

Insider

‘The whole world’ is racing to buy the drones that have helped Ukrainians obliterate Russian tanks and missile launchers, their designer says

Reed Alexander – May 30, 2022

• “The whole world” wants to buy the Bayraktar TB2 drone, its designer recently told Reuters.
• Turkish firm Baykar Technologies designed the aerial weapon, which launches laser-guided missles.
• The drone has been used to devastating effect by Ukrainians repelling Russian ground forces.

Since the Russian invasion began in February, a powerful Turkish-made drone has helped Ukrainian defense forces thwart their enemy on the ground over and over again.

Now, inspired by Ukraine’s success, armies around the world are clamoring to get their hands on the devastating aerial weapon, its creator recently said.

“The whole world is a customer” seeking to obtain the Bayraktar TB2 drone, its designer, Selcuk Bayraktar, told Reuters in an interview.

“Bayraktar TB2 is doing what it was supposed to do — taking out some of the most advanced anti-aircraft systems and advanced artillery systems and armored vehicles,” Bayraktar added while speaking at a recent exhibition in Azerbaijan.

His father, Ozdemir Bayraktar, founded Baykar Technologies in Istanbul in the 1980s, and died last year at age 72. The younger Bayraktar, who serves as the company’s chief technology officer, is the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Throughout Russia’s offensive campaign, Ukrainian forces have used the drones to decimate Russian weapons including tanks and Buk surface-to-air missile launchers. Bayraktar drones prowl the sky at up to 25,000 feet, raining laser-guided rockets down on enemies below.

The drones have been so effective at helping Ukraine repel Russian forces that Mikhail Podolyak, a senior Ukrainian official and advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, hailed the drones as “super-weapons” in a social media post alongside Bayraktar in March. Podolyak said that the weapon had left Russian tanks “burning flawlessly.”

“They’ll continue to burn, as Bayraktars ideally fulfill any task — imperceptibly, frighteningly, destructively,” he added.

Bayraktar expressed satisfaction with the weapon’s widespread use in the Ukraine conflict, telling Reuters: “It is an illegal invasion so [the drone] is helping the honorable people of Ukraine defend their country.”

The success of the weapon in the Ukraine conflict has attracted more business internationally. Reuters reported that the TB2 has been used in other conflict zones including Syria, Libya, and Iraq, and has gone on to become a cornerstone of “Turkey’s global defense export push.”

Earlier this month, Lithuanians raised more than $5 million to purchase a TB2 drone for the Ukrainian military in an effort organized by online broadcaster Laisves TV. The fundraising effort took just three days, with most donations from ordinary Lithuanians amounting between €10 to €500, the country’s official Twitter account said.

Taxi drones will ‘revolutionize’ inner-city transportation

Aside from advanced weapons tech, Bayraktar told Reuters that his company is working on developing “taxi drones” to help augment inner-city transportation.

“If you look at the longer time horizon, we are working on taxi drones,” he said. “For that we need to develop more higher-level autonomy technolgoy — which is AI basically — but it will revolutionize how people will be transported in cities.”

But there’s no doubt that the use of the Bayraktar drone in Ukraine has put Baykar Technologies on the global map for offensive weapons technology.

Bayraktar said now the company is developing a next-generation iternation of the TB2 — the TB3, which will have foldable wings and can make use of “short-runway aircraft carriers,” Reuters reported.

Other existing drones the company has developed aside from the TB2 have notched impressive feats, as well.

Baykar’s Akinci drone, which flies unmanned and has a longer and wider body than the TB2, recently completed an “unseen” flight from the far western reaches of Turkey to Azerbaijan, the company said in a news release. The journey lasted for five hours during which the drones flew more than 1,200 miles across three countries — which the firm called “a first in Turkish aviation history.”

Ukrayinska Pravda

Security Service of Ukraine: contract soldiers in the Russian army are waiting for the end of May to escape from Ukraine

Valentina Romanenko – May 29, 2022

At the end of May, the 90-day deadline set by the Putin regime for conducting the so-called “special operation” expires. Contract soldiers who came to fight in Ukraine in February are “legally” entitled to leave the service.

Source: phone conversations of occupiers intercepted by the Security Service of Ukraine

Quote from occupier: “F*cking sh*t. In short, they said, there will be no replacement. No one wants to relieve us, everyone refuses to come here. I think, sh*t, I’ll probably sit it out now, but as soon as the three months are over, damn, I need to get out somehow. I’ll look for something in civilian life. After all, there is life beyond the army, isn’t there?”

Details: At the same time, the Security Service of Ukraine noted that it is not easy for the Russian command to find new people willing to fight, and it is also difficult to keep its soldiers on the front line.

The above-mentioned Russian soldier told his friend that people have come to unnerve them, intimidating them with a negative note on their personal file, but this is not stopping many people.

Quote from the Security Service of Ukraine: “We hope that the [size of the] invading army will decrease by the summer. If not, our defenders will help them return home. As we have already helped the more than 30 thousand invaders who have died in the war”.

Ukrayinska Pravda

General Staff: Russian operation on Sloviansk front fails, Russian units withdraw from Lyman

Kateryna Tyshchenko – May 29, 2022

Russia continues to mount an offensive in eastern Ukraine in order to establish full control over Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook, information as of 18:00 on 29 May

Quote: “The enemy continues to mount an offensive in the Skhid [East] Operational Zone in order to establish full control over the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and to cut off Ukraine’s naval connections in the northeastern part of the Black Sea.”

Details: On the Sloviansk front, Russian troops conducted an artillery-supported assault on the Pasika – Bohorodychne front, but they were unsuccessful and retreated to their earlier positions. Several times throughout the day, Russian troops opened fire from mortars and artillery on the villages of Velyka Komyshuvakha, Dovhenke, and Virnopillia.

Russian occupation forces conducted active hostilities on the Sievierodonetsk, Bakhmut, and Kurakhove fronts. Their main goal is to encircle Ukrainian troops in Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk, and to block their main supply routes.

Russia is deploying its aircraft, missile forces, artillery, and electronic warfare methods. Russian troops are replenishing their ammunition and fuel supplies in order to facilitate another attempt to force a crossing over the Siverskyi Donets river near the above-mentioned fronts.

On the Kurakhove front, Russian forces continue to fire on Ukrainian troops from mortars, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, and combat and operational-tactical aircraft along the entire line of contact in order to deplete the personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and destroy their fortifications.

On the Lyman front, Russia has withdrawn some of its units from the city of Lyman.

On the Sievierodonetsk front, Russian troops continue to fire on Ukrainian troops from barrel and jet artillery in order to support ground forces. Russian operational-tactical aircraft conducted an air strike near the town of Ustynivka. Russia is attempting to gain a foothold in Sievierodonetsk’s northeastern outskirts and has conducted assault operations in an attempt to advance to the city’s central neighbourhoods.

On the Bakhmut front, Russia undertook measures to prepare for assault operations; Russian troops deployed mortars, artillery, and multiple rocket launchers to fire on Komyshuvakha, Dolomitne, and New-York. Russian operational-tactical aircraft conducted an air strike on Berestove and Pokrovske. Russian troops also launched four missile strikes on Verkhnokamianske, Vrubkivka, and Soledar.

On the Avdiivka and Kurakhove fronts, Russian forces actively fired on the positions of Ukrainian troops and deployed operational-tactical aircraft and helicopters to conduct air strikes.

On the Pivdennyi Buh front, Russia focused its efforts on maintaining its current positions and performing combat engineering tasks to reinforce those positions.

On the Kryvyi Rih front, Russian forces deployed mortars, artillery, and rockets to attack Ukrainian troops in and around Trudoliubivka, Male Shesternia, Dobrianka, Kniazivka, Tokareve, Shyroke, Pervomaiske, Novomykolaivka, Kotliarevo, Novohryhorivka, Tavriiske, and Posad-Pokrovske.

On the Slobozhansk front, Russia’s main efforts were focused on maintaining its previously occupied positions.

On the Kharkiv front, Russian occupation forces bombarded the area using artillery and rockets, conducted aerial reconnaissance, and launched an air strike on the town of Prudianka.

On the Mykolaiv front, Russian reserve troops are being transferred to Andriivka, Bilohirka, and Bila Krynytsia in order to replenish losses. Russian troops deployed a combat UAV near the village of Stara Bohdanivka.

On the Siversk front, units of the 1st Guards Tank Army and of Airborne Troops of the Russian Federation are still covering the Russian-Ukrainian border in Bryansk and Kursk oblasts in Russia in order to prevent Ukrainian troops from being transferred to other fronts.

Russian forces continued to shell border-adjacent areas in Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts, in particular in Senkivka, Hirsk, Khrinivka, and Hasychivka in Chernihiv Oblast, and Bachivsk, Seredyna Buda, Boiaro-Lezhachi, and Manukhivka in Sumy Oblast.

Russia conducted aerial reconnaissance using unmanned aerial vehicles in order to determine the positions of Ukrainian troops.

There were no significant changes on the Volyn and Polissia fronts.

The Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation continues to carry out missions to facilitate the isolation of the area of active hostilities in the waters of the Black and Azov seas. Russia continues to obstruct all civilian shipping in the northeastern part of the Black Sea.

The New York Times

‘It Destroys Bunkers’: Russia Systematically Uses Thermobaric Warheads in Ukraine

Andrew E. Kramer – May 29, 2022

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Russia has made liberal use of one of its most fearsome conventional weapons in the fighting in eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian military commanders, medics, British officials and videos from the battlefields.

The weapon, a track-mounted rocket artillery system nicknamed Solntsepek, or the Heatwave, fires thermobaric warheads that explode with tremendous force, sending potentially lethal shock waves into bunkers or trenches where soldiers would otherwise be safe.

“You feel the ground shake,” said Col. Yevhen Shamataliuk, commander of Ukraine’s 95th Brigade, whose soldiers came under fire from Russia’s Heatwave weapon in fighting this month near the town of Izyum.

“It’s very destructive,” Shamataliuk said. “It destroys bunkers. They just collapse over those who are inside.”

The United States and other militaries also deploy thermobaric warheads in missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. And Ukraine’s army said April 5 that it had fired Heatwave thermobaric rockets from a captured system back at Russian troops, intending to burn them with their own weapon, in fighting near Izyum.

Thermobaric weapons are not banned, and they are not addressed in the Geneva Conventions, a series of international agreements that govern warfare. Russia’s military has deployed the Heatwave weapon in the war in Syria, but its use in Ukraine has become systematic, according to the Ukrainian military and video footage of strikes on towns in eastern Ukraine.

Such explosives, also called fuel-air bombs or vacuum bombs, scatter a flammable mist or powder that is then ignited and burns in the air. The result is a powerful blast followed by a partial vacuum as oxygen is sucked from the air as the fuel burns.

Ukrainian soldiers who have been caught in the explosions and survived suffered a mix of burns and concussions, said Sgt. Anna Federchuk, an ambulance medic based in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, who has treated casualties from Heatwave strikes.

“It’s a mixed diagnosis,” she said of the typical casualty from a Heatwave explosion. “The burns are deep and severe.”

The Russian weapon carries a box of rockets atop a tanklike tracked vehicle. It can fire single rockets or a terrifying volley. Still, like many Russian weapons deployed in the Ukraine war, the Heatwave system may not be as effective or decisive in combat as Russian military propaganda suggested it would be.

Developed in the 1980s and once viewed as an awesome and feared invention of late-Soviet military prowess, the Heatwave, formally known as a Tos-1 heavy flamethrower, has drawbacks.

With a range of only 6 miles, it must be driven close to the front to fire. There, it has been vulnerable to Ukrainian ambushes. In March, a drone video showed Ukrainian soldiers blowing up a Heatwave weapon during an ambush outside the Kyiv suburb of Brovary.

The strike on the vehicle sent its rockets sailing out into the Russians’ own column of armored vehicles, although it was unclear whether any were destroyed.

Their use near the front has also allowed Ukraine to capture some of the weapons. Videos have appeared online purporting to show Ukrainian tractor drivers towing captured Heatwave weapons away from the front. Ukrainian soldiers have claimed on social media to have seized five of the weapons systems as trophies.

Ukraine’s military has also said that the Russians have suffered friendly fire incidents with the Heatwave as it sprayed out highly destructive but unguided rockets.

“The leadership of the 97th Infantry Battalion expresses its satisfaction with the actions of the Russian occupiers,” the Ukrainian military said in a sarcastic statement May 8 after what it said was a friendly fire strike in the Zaporizhzhia region that killed Russian soldiers. “Such actions are positively perceived and supported in every way by the Ukrainian military. We understand there is a tradition of cooking shish kebabs in May.”