Ukraine says it destroyed a Russian mortar carrier after a pro-Kremlin journalist accidentally exposed its location
Matthew Loh – May 23, 2022
One of Russia’s “Tyulpan” self-propelled heavy mortars was destroyed after its location was revealed, Ukraine says.Leonid Faerberg/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Ukraine says it destroyed a Russian mortar carrier after a pro-Kremlin journalist accidentally exposed its location
A pro-Kremlin journalist’s report exposed the location of a Russian mortar carrier, Ukraine said.
Ukrainian forces later destroyed the vehicle and thanked the Russian reporter “for the tip.”
Russian journalist Alexander Kots rejected the suggestion that his coverage compromised the vehicle.
A pro-Kremlin journalist’s report on the military capabilities of a Russian mortar carrier inadvertently exposed the vehicle’s location to Ukrainian forces and led to its destruction, Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communication said.
“Thank you to Russian propagandists for the tip,” StratCom UA tweeted on Sunday, along with a video that appeared to show the mortar carrier being blown up.
The Ukrainian government agency said its forces had lured the vehicle out of its position before it was destroyed.
StratCom UA also said on Facebook that this was the first time this class of mortar carrier — the SAU 2C4 “Tyulpan” — had been taken out in the war.
However, the Russian journalist who made the initial report, Alexander “Sasha” Kots, has rejected the idea that his video coverage led to the artillery vehicle’s destruction.
“Let’s observe informational hygiene and ignore such literary defecations, covering our noses in disgust,” Kots wrote on his Telegram channel in response to the Ukrainian claims.
Kots wrote that Ukraine’s footage of the “Tyulpan” getting destroyed shows a different area from where he and his crew filmed the vehicle, and that the mortar carrier had left the location before his team departed.
His report featured clips of a “Tyulpan” firing rounds near the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk in the Donbas region. Kots wrote in his caption that Ukrainian forces were being “hammered” by the mortar carrier, and said in his video that it was being used by Russian-backed separatists to destroy a bridge.
Kots works for the Russian outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda, which often repeats the Kremlin’s war rhetoric — such as the baseless claim that Ukraine’s leadership has been infiltrated by Nazis scheming against Russia.
At Mariupol cemetery, a grieving mother ponders war’s human toll
May 23, 2022
A woman visits her son’s grave at a cemetery outside Mariupol
(Reuters) – At a cemetery outside Mariupol, a Ukrainian city captured by Russia last week after a destructive three-month siege, a grief-stricken mother sobs inconsolably.
Natalya lost her only son, Vladimir Voloshin, on March 26 when shrapnel smashed into his skull and chest in the fight for the city. He was 28.
Wearing a headscarf to hold back her flowing white curls, the 57-year-old nurse said Vladimir had recently graduated from a local naval academy. What seemed like a promising career was upended overnight when Ukraine announced a general mobilisation to counter the Russian invasion.
“He had been supposed to set sail in February,” Natalya said on Sunday between sobs at the cemetery in Staryi Krym, just north of Mariupol, where her son was laid to rest.
“But then the war started. For no reason at all.”
Russia sent thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, saying it had to counter a military threat and rid Ukraine of nationalists threatening Russian speakers – claims dismissed by Kyiv and Western countries as false pretexts for a land grab.
Mariupol, a once bustling port city on the Sea of Azov in southeastern Ukraine quickly became a Russian target. After a siege that Ukraine says killed tens of thousands, it has now succumbed to occupation and lies in ruins.
Treading through long rows of fresh graves and makeshift wooden crosses, Natalya said many of Mariupol’s dead had no one left to honour their memory.
“Who will bury them? Who will put up a plaque?” she asked. “They have no family.”
Coup against Putin would be triggered if one of his top officials refused to carry out a nuclear strike, Bellingcat expert say
Matthew Loh – May 23, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends Orthodox Easter mass in Moscow, Russia, on April 24, 2022.Contributor/Getty Images Coup against Putin would be triggered if one of his top officials refused to carry out a nuclear strike, Bellingcat expert says
Putin would face a coup if he orders a nuclear strike and is disobeyed, a Bellingcat expert said.
Defying his command would signal insubordination that may lead to “the death of Putin,” he said.
Some leading Russian officials already believe Putin is losing his grip on power, the expert said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin would face a coup if one of his top officials ever disobeyed an order to launch a nuclear strike, according to Bellingcat’s lead Russia investigator Christo Grozev.
The coup would take place if just one of the “five hands” needed for a Russian nuclear launch defied Putin, Grozev told Radio Liberty, per the Metro news outlet.
“Because after the refusal to comply with the order of the king, everything will go down very quickly,” he said, the outlet reported.
According to Metro, Grozev said Putin may be under pressure from some in his inner circle to escalate the invasion of Ukraine via the mass mobilization of troops or even a nuclear strike.
However, the Russian leader must first “be sure everyone along the chain will carry out this order” before he considers sanctioning such a launch, Grozev said, the outlet reported.
Per Metro, the investigator said that if one person in the chain of command refused to comply, it would be a “signal of insubordination” that could bring about the “death of Putin.”
“So until he is sure that everyone will comply, he will not give this order,” Grozev added, per the outlet.
To launch a nuclear strike, a decision would need to be made by the Russian president, who always has a small briefcase (or “Cheget”) by his side that links him to the country’s nuclear forces, Reuters reported citing a 2020 nuclear policy document.
While the briefcase doesn’t have a launch button, it relays the order to Russia’s central military command, per the outlet.
Even if Putin decided to launch such an attack, at least two other lead officials would also be needed to follow through with his command.
According to several intelligence reports, a nuclear strike can only be carried out if Russia’s defence minister and chief of the general staff — positions currently by Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, respectively — also authorize the launch with their own codes and “Cheget” briefcases.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (right) and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov attend a meeting in Moscow on February 27, 2022.ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images
According to the Arms Control Association, Russia claims it has an inventory of 6,257 nuclear warheads, compared with the 5,500 estimated warheads in the US.
A man was “leaking” information to the Russians about the positions of the Armed Forces and the National Guard in Bakhmut
Roman Petrenko – May 23, 2022
The Prosecutor General’s Office announced that a resident of Bakhmut Donetsk region, had been exposed for treason. The man had been marking the positions of Ukrainian defenders.
Details: According to the investigation, it was in May that the citizen agreed to help the aggressors.
The man had been transferring information on the location and movement of personnel and equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to an agent of the Russian law enforcement agency via the internet, as well as filming the location of National Guard personnel in Bakhmut.
In addition, he had been putting marks on electronic maps and had been informing the invaders about the missiles hitting the city’s civilian infrastructure buildings.
Currently, the man is under arrest without bail.
Reminder: As a result of the Russian airstrike on Bakhmut in the Donetsk region on 17 May, 5 civilians were killed, including a two-year-old child, and 4 residents were injured.
On 19 May, the Russian armed forces made another airstrike on Bakhmut, shelling a five-story building, a private house and an office building.
Russia’s Ukraine invasion ‘makes no sense,’ according to a leading historian who once angered Putin by asking him about energy
Ryan Hogg – May 22, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via teleconference call at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, on May 20, 2022. AP Russia’s Ukraine invasion ‘makes no sense,’ according to a leading historian who once angered Putin by asking him about energy
Daniel Yergin is a leading energy historian and vice-chairman of S&P Global.
He said Russia’s days as an energy superpower were “waning,” and called the invasion “irrational.”
Yergin said he’d once angered Putin by asking about shale energy at a conference in 2013.
A leading energy historian, who claims to have enraged Vladimir Putin by asking him about shale energy, has said Russia overestimated the West’s reliance on its oil and gas when it invaded Ukraine.
In an interview with the New York Times, Daniel Yergin called the invasion “irrational,” adding: “One of Putin’s many miscalculations was his assumption that, because of Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, it would protest but stand aside, as it did with Crimea.
“It has had just the opposite effect. Europe wants to get out of that dependence as fast as it can.”
Yergin, who is vice-chairman of S&P Global, told the Times Putin was “like a CEO when he talks about energy markets,” and that he had timed the invasion to when those markets were at their tightest, as supply chains unwound after the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said the invasion heralded “a new uncertain era,” adding: “As we talk, the risks are going up.”
In a separate interview on Friday, Yergin told Bloomberg’s “What Goes Up” podcast that he asked the first question of Putin after the Russian president had spoken at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2013.
The historian said he asked about shale gas and Putin “started shouting at me saying, ‘shale is barbaric!'”
“He knew that US shale was a threat to him in two ways: one, because US natural gas would compete with natural gas in Europe, and secondly, because this would really augment the US’s position in the world and give it a kind of flexibility it didn’t have when it was importing 60% of its oil,” Yergin told the podcast.
He added that growing American shale oil and gas production had reduced the country’s dependence on Russian energy, which “had a much bigger impact on geopolitics than people recognize.”
Yergin said on the podcast that “Russia’s door to the West is closed,” and that it would be forced to pivot toward China as Europe moves away from Russian energy.
Office of the President: Ukraine itself will unblock the Black Sea if it receives MLRS systems
Roman Petrenko – May 22, 2022
Photo from the Militarnyi website
The President’s Office notes that Ukraine needs the American MLRS multiple launch rocket system, including for unblocking the Black Sea.
Source: Head of the Office of the President Andrii Yermak in Telegram; his adviser Mykhailo Podoliak on Twitter.
Yermak’s Quote: “We need to get high-precision missiles, drones, anti-aircraft defence systems and ammunition. We are still waiting for MLRS.”
Podoliak’s Quote: “1.6 billion people may become malnourished due to lack of food. Hundreds of millions will fall below the poverty line due to rising prices.
The Economist predicts the consequences of Russian aggression and invites the world to agree with Ukraine and Russia on international food convoys in the Black Sea.
Bargain with a country that has taken hundreds of millions of people hostage? We have a better idea: the world should agree on the transfer of MLRS systems and other necessary heavy weapons to Ukraine to unlock the Black Sea. Then we’ll do everything ourselves.”
Recall: The UN warned that the closure of ports in the Black Sea could provoke a global food disaster, which will lead to famine, mass migration and political instability in the world.
Russians prepare to resume offensive on Sloviansk – General Staff Summary
Denys Karlovskyi – May 21, 2022
MAP OF HOSTILITIES IN DONBAS. PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Russian occupying forces are preparing to resume offensive operations from Izium to Sloviansk.
Source: evening summary of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for 21 May
Quote: “The occupying forces are preparing to resume their offensive on the Sloviansk front. During the day, the enemy carried out artillery shelling in the areas of Velyka Komyshuvakha and Dovhenke in Kharkiv Oblast.
On the Slobozhansk front, the enemy continues to conduct hostilities in order to hold the occupied frontiers. In order to prevent our troops from reaching the state border, they launched air strikes and fired artillery at the areas of Chornohlazivka, Prudianka, Dementiivka and Ternova.”
Details: Russian troops are also preparing for an offensive on the Lyman front.
On the Donetsk front, the enemy is trying to break through the Ukrainian troops’ line of defence and reach the administrative border of Luhansk Oblast.
Supported by aircraft and artillery, they carried out assault operations in the areas of Lypove, Vasylivka, Marinka and Novomykhailivka in Donetsk Oblast, but without success.
The Russians launched air and artillery strikes on civilian targets in Bakhmut and Vrubovka. An air strike was also launched on Mykilskyi in the Volnovakha district.
The aggressor did not carry out offensive operations on the Novopavlivsk and Zaporizhzhia fronts. Civilian infrastructure was shelled in the areas of Vremivka in Donetsk Oblast, and Olhivske, Zatyshshya, Guliaypole, Orikhiv, Novodanylivka and Kamianske in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
On the Pivdennyi Buh, Siversk, Volyn and Polissia fronts, the situation has not changed significantly.
In Chernihiv Oblast, Russian invaders fired on the settlements of Semenivka, Bleshnia and Hirsk. Missile strikes were separately launched on targets in the Poltava and Zhytomyr regions.
Ukrainian intelligence continues to record that the Russian command is carrying out covert mobilisation to rotate troops that have suffered losses during the hostilities against the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Compulsory measures to enlist men from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine are also continuing.
Under the slogan of “nationalisation”, Russian invaders are looting the property of telecommunications companies in the occupied territories of the southern oblasts of Ukraine.
Background:
In its morning summary, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported the aggressor’s plans to attack Sloviansk from the east – from the side of Siversk on the border of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
As of the morning of 21 May, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have killed 28,500 Russian soldiers and destroyed 1,278 tanks, 3,116 armored combat vehicles and 462 drones.
Zelenskyy says UN, Red Cross order Russia to take its ‘mountains of corpses’
Caitlin McFall – May 21, 2022
The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross have directed Russian President Vladimir Putin to remove his “mountain of corpses,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday.
“They abandoned their military,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with a Ukrainian news outlet. “They were dying, but they didn’t care. Recently I was told that they are only now thinking about taking the corpses.
“When the war started…they used to pretend that there were no corpses,” he continued. “The UN and the Red Cross said – take these bags away. Mountains of corpses of their military.”
A Russian Armoured personnel carrier (APC) burns next to an unidentified soldier’s body during a fight with the Ukrainian armed forces in Kharkiv. Photo by SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images
Moscow has long relied on its propaganda machine to fuel support for its conflict in Ukraine and Putin has refused to declare open war on Kyiv, instead calling it a “special military operation.”
Reports surfaced early in the invasion that Russia was potentially relying on a “mobile crematorium” to dispose of dead soldiers to help cover the evidence of mounting causalities.
The Pentagon has assessed that Russia is behind schedule in eastern Ukraine, where it intends to gain “full control.”
But press secretary John Kirby said Friday that the U.S. has assessed that Russian forces are still making “incremental gains” in the Donbas and a senior U.S. defense official told reporters this week the U.S. believes Moscow is making some headway in the Black Sea as well.
“The Russians are still well behind where we believe they wanted to be when they started this revitalized effort in the eastern part of the country,” Kirby said from the Pentagon. “And while they have made, and we have been very honest about this, they have made some incremental progress in the Donbas. It is incremental, it is slow, it’s uneven, and the Ukrainians continue to push back.”
UKRAINE MORALE IS ‘HUGE’ BOOST IN WAR WITH RUSSIA, NATO MILITARY CHIEFS SAY
The Ukrainian president said he signed a decree in early 2022 to add 100,000 additional troops to its fighting force by next year, but warned he is not sure that this will be enough to take on the entire might of Russia.
Western defense officials have argued Russia does not appear to have properly planned for its major offensive against Ukraine, and Zelenskyy said Saturday his nation had been bracing for an attack since September 2021 as Russia started to amass troops along its southern border.
But Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is fighting more than just Russia and has Belarus to contend with as it has backed Putin’s deadly campaign.
“We have to look at the cost of this war,” he said. “We broke the back of one of the world’s strongest armies. We have already done it. Psychologically we have done it.
“They will not stand on their feet for the next few years,” he added.
Putin is losing his grip on power and top Russian security officials think the Ukraine war is ‘lost,’ expert says
Joshua Zitser – May 21, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin seen during the Summit of Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) at the Grand Kremlin Palace on May 16, 2022.Contributor/Getty Images
Top Russian security officials think the war in Ukraine is “lost,” according to an expert.
These officials are now preparing themselves for a post-Putin Russia, said Bellingcat’s Christo Grozev.
Some of them are already looking for opportunities to take their families out of Russia, Grozev said, per Metro.
Top Russian security officials think the war in Ukraine is “lost,” suggesting that Vladimir Putin’s regime might be coming to an end, according to an expert on Russia-related security threats.
The “informed elite” within the security forces “understand that the war is lost,” said Bellingcat’s lead Russia investigator Christo Grozev in an interview with Radio Liberty, per Metro.
To have a chance of winning the war, Grozev said, the Russian president would need full mobilization but this would cause problems for him at home. Mass mobilization would lead to a “social explosion” in Russia, Grozev added, according to Metro.
There are those in Putin’s inner circle who may pressure him to use nuclear or chemical weapons, Grozev continued, but others will say “enough is enough.” These people would say “it is better not to waste another 10,000 lives of our soldiers and officers,” Grozev said, per Metro.
Western officials say Russia, facing military setbacks, is losing momentum as the war in Ukraine goes on.
Grozev said that security officials with the FSB, who know how many Russian soldiers have died, think Putin is losing his grip on power. ‘These are those parts of the security forces who know the dangers for the regime, and they themselves are now preparing their future,” he said, per Metro.
A number of officials from the FSB and GRU are preparing for a post-Putin Russia, according to the expert. “Some of them are looking for an opportunity to take their families out of Russia,” Grozev said.
A Ukrainian serviceman walks amid destroyed Russian tanks in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, April 6, 2022.AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File
Last week, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief told Sky News that a coup to overthrow Putin is already underway. “It is impossible to stop it,” said Major General Kyrylo Budanov.
Insider previously reported that the grievances that typically motivate a coup against a dictator are in place — a struggling economy, military setbacks, and floundering morale. However, Putin has spent decades making his regime coup-proof, an expert told Insider.
Ukraine’s stymies Russian efforts to cut off Luhansk in Bilohorivka
May 21, 2022
Siversky Donets River
Despite the fact that heavy fighting is still going on in the region, thanks to the extraordinary professionalism of the Armed Forces, this episode has already gone down in the history of war with Russia.
Deployment of forces as of May 13, 2022, one of the circles marks Bilohorivka www.understandingwar.org
A strike on a school in Bilohorivka and construction of a pontoon crossing: what the invaders were trying to achieve
Before the Russian invasion, about 1,000 people lived in the village of Bilohorivka (Sievierodonetsk district, Luhansk Oblast). However, in early May 2022, this small town gained exceptional strategic importance on military maps.
It was in this area that Russian troops tried to ford the Siverskyi Donets River, a natural barrier between the Armed Forces and the invaders in the hottest parts of the front.
A successful breakthrough and the development of the Russian army’s offensive near Bilohorivka could allow it to take control of the Lysychansk-Bakhmut route, which Luhansk Regional State Administration Chairman Serhiy Hayday calls the “road of life” — it connects the region with Ukrainian-controlled territories. In addition, such a breakthrough could increase the threat of the encirclement of some Ukrainian forces defending the settlements of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
On May 7, the Russian army resorted to “preparatory” actions, launching an airstrike on a school in Bilohorivka, where almost 90 civilians were hiding. About 60 of them are believed to have been killed in the attack.
“If [the invaders] entrench themselves, they can develop an offensive and get closer to the road, cutting off Luhansk Oblast — it will mean the loss of the single path to safety and communication with other regions,” Hayday stated in his morning report on May 9, when Moscow pompously celebrated Victory Day.
“Today is decisive. Let’s fight for the “road of life” […] Trust in the Ukrainian Armed Forces! We have everything to defeat the ogres. As they crossed the river, so will they swim back.”
Ukrainian Airborne Forces Command Handout via REUTERS
The Ukrainian army managed to realize such hopes almost literally: in the following days, Ukrainian defenders destroyed several such crossings, forcing the Russians to flee, even by swimming. At the same time, a huge amount of enemy equipment and personnel was destroyed, comparable to the staffing of one or two battalion tactical groups (BTG) of the Russian Federation.
Bilohorivka as a new Chornobaivka: what losses and how exactly the Armed Forces inflicted them on the Russians
According to journalist Yuriy Butusov, the most active phase of fighting in the Bilohorivka area took place on May 5-13, when units of the 58th Motorized Infantry, 80th Air Assault, 128th Mountain Assault, and 57th Motorized Brigades of the Armed Forces repulsed Russian troops.
With strong artillery support, the Ukrainian military managed not only to destroy the original crossing and enemy forces that were trying to form the first bridgehead but also to crush several other attempts by Russia to build pontoon bridges.
According to the New York Times, Russian commanders sent about 550 servicemen of the 74th Motor Rifle Brigade of the 41st Army to ford the Siverskyi Donets near Bilohorivka.
At least 485 of them were liquidated by Ukrainian defenders, along with more than 80 units of Russian equipment, according to the Institute for the Study of War. These are the most conservative estimates: according to Butusov, Russia has lost even more near Bilohorivka — over 100 units of military equipment.
Similar assessments were made by analyst Pavel Voylov, who meticulously summarized all available photos and videos from Bilohorivka and published an extremely detailed database of the defeat of the invaders in their attempt to ford the Siverskyi Donets.
This database contains 110 objects (equipment and engineering constructions) in Bilohorivka and its vicinity. Among them are tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, tugboats needed to construct the crossing, and other Russian military equipment, such as:
58 destroyed and sunken objects: they are marked in red on the map below (10 tanks, 31 infantry fighting vehicles, 3 airborne combat vehicles, 3 floating armored personnel carriers, 1 armored repair and evacuation vehicle, 1 landing armored personnel carrier, 2 tugboats, 1 pontoon park vehicle and 6 unknown objects);
31 possibly destroyed or damaged objects marked in khaki (2 tanks, 9 infantry fighting vehicles, 4 floating armored personnel carriers, 1 floating conveyor, 9 pontoon park vehicles, 3 pontoons on the shore and 3 unknown objects);
4 objects without any damage, displayed in white (2 tanks, 1 infantry fighting vehicle, and 1 unknown object).
“The total number of destroyed, sunk, possibly destroyed or damaged objects today [May 18] is 89 units,” Voylov says.
Of this number, some of the objects may be only damaged, but, on the other hand, there are very few photos and videos of Bilohorivka-North – only one reliably destroyed object has been identified there so far. Given that the enemy was forced to retreat to the crossing as a result of the battle, its losses there are probably uncounted.
According to sources cited by the Ukrainian military news outlet Defence Express, after the devastating defeat near Bilohorivka, remnants of the Russian 74th Motor Rifle Brigade withdrew from Ukrainian territory to the Voronezh region of the Russian Federation, due to a complete loss of combat capability.
This data suggests all three motorized infantry battalions of this brigade were defeated, and in the tank battalion of 31 vehicles, there were only five tanks capable of moving by themselves.
It is worth noting that this brigade, from the beginning of the invasion, operated near Chernihiv and Nizhyn, where it had already suffered losses, and after the Russians retreated from northern Ukraine, it was transferred to the Izyum axis.
Butusov, who visited the battlefield near Bilohorivka shortly after a successful counterattack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said that at first the enemy managed to transport several dozen units of equipment to the Ukrainian-controlled bank of the river.
The invaders tried to gain a foothold in 1 square kilometer area, “and this could be — and was — a really big problem for us,” Butusov said.
“But our troops in very difficult conditions, where the situation was constantly changing, went into battle, and the attacks of our infantry stopped the advance of the enemy on the bridgehead,” Butusov said in a video dated May 15, after returning from Bilohorivka.
“And after the infantry restrained a further offensive, our artillery precisely targeted Russian equipment, Russian reserves, Russian infantry — now everything has been driven out of our bank of the Siverskyi Donets.”
Figures indicate damaged or destroyed objects in the area of the Russian forces’ attempt to force the Siversky Donets near Bilohorivka Pavel Voylov via Facebook
The YouTube channel Ukrayinskyi Svidok (‘Ukrainian Witness’), which documents the war with Russia, also released a video of a “cemetery” of Russian equipment from the area where the enemy army tried to ford the Siverskyi Donets.
These shots were taken by one of the Ukrainian service members who took part in the hostilities.
Around the same time, Russians tried to cross a river in the Dronivka area, 12 km west of Bilohorivka, but failed there as well.
The 30th Prince Konstantyn Ostrogski Mechanized Brigade reported that Russian troops were trying to create three bridgeheads near the village of Dronivka.
“But the heroism and resilience of our infantry, artillery, and tankers of the 30th Mechanized Brigade and other units of the Armed Forces managed to stop the Russian troops and inflict heavy losses on them,” the Ukrainian military noted, releasing video footage of the act.
The clip shows the destruction of about 15 units of enemy military equipment, including three infantry fighting vehicles, two tanks, pontoons, boats, and amphibious, and engineering vehicles, according to Defence Express.
Consequences and assessments of the enemy’s defeat near Bilohorivka
As of May 20, heavy fighting continues in Luhansk Oblast. The invaders are destroying local towns and villages, and Russian forces still control one of the banks of the Siverskyi Donets. However, new attempts to ford the river near Bilohorivka have not been observed yet.
“The orcs are not fording the Siverskyi Donets yet,” said Hayday on May 17.
“(They are) scared. Foreign media reports that (Putin) is personally devising a plan for how this can be done. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are doing everything possible to prevent the Russians from crossing the river, creating a bridgehead for the offensive and cutting us off from the road of life.”
Meanwhile, the global media has noted the proficiency of the Armed Forces in preventing a Russian crossing.
The NYT says that if the reports on the nearly 500 invaders killed while fording the river are confirmed, it will be one of the biggest combat losses of the war with Russia.
The NYT points out that about 500 people were on the sunken Russian cruiser Moskva, but their fate in Russia has been kept under wraps, and the exact number of dead is still unknown.
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War in its reports noted that as a result of the defeat near Bilohorivka, the Russian army “likely lost the momentum necessary to execute a large-scale crossing of the Siverskyi Donets River.”
“The attempted river crossing showed a stunning lack of tactical sense as satellite images show (destroyed) Russian vehicles tightly bunched up at both ends of the (destroyed) bridge, clearly allowing Ukrainian artillerymen to kill hundreds and destroy scores of vehicles with concentrated strikes,” the Institute pointed out.
It also said that the defeat near Bilohorivka has provoked a barrage of criticism of the Russian military command, even among pro-Kremlin military bloggers.
Among them is Yuri Podolyaka, a Russian blogger with 2.1 million subscribers on his Telegram channel, who said in a recent video: “I kept silence for a long time. The last straw that overwhelmed my patience was the events around Bilohorivka, where due to stupidity — I stress, because of the stupidity of the Russian command — at least one battalion tactical group was burned, possibly two.”
According to analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, against the background of Russian informational secrecy and propaganda efforts that obscure the real picture of developments in Ukraine, these bloggers’ comments “may fuel burgeoning doubts in Russia about Russia’s prospects in this war and the competence of Russia’s military leaders.”
