Ukraine took out more than 5,000 Russian soldiers from battle — killing, wounding or imprisoning the troops — after Russian forces attempted to collect intel on Ukraine defense capabilities in Vuhledar, according to a report.
A Ukrainian official told Politico the Ukrainians eliminated the thousands of soldiers, including members of an elite Russian brigade, when the 155th naval infantry troops stormed the coal-mining town in the Donetsk region in late January.
Ukrainian soldiers also killed the brigade’s command staff and destroyed 130 pieces of equipment, including 36 tanks, said Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, head of the united press center of the Tavriskiy District of Ukrainian defense forces.
He added that Russian forces were typically losing 150 to 300 marines a day near Vuhledar.
However, some estimates are even higher. UK officials said a stunning 824 Russian troops are dying each day, citing Ukrainian General Staff updates.
A rate of 824 deaths per day is about four times higher than the mean in June-July 2022, the UK government said.
Dmytrashkivskyi said the elite 155th brigade has needed new manpower three times.
“The 155th brigade already had to be restaffed three times. The first time after Irpin and Bucha; the second time they were defeated near Donetsk — they recovered again,” he told Politico. “And now almost the entire brigade has already been destroyed near Vuhledar.”
Ukrainian marines posted a video of Russian troops piling up on a battlefield near Vuhledar.
“Go make a cemetery! Gosh, the first column went there and blew up, and then the second one went exactly the same route,” Ukrainian artillerymen said on the video, according to the outlet.
Russian nationalists fretted over the defeat, with some Russian military bloggers calling for public trials against high-ranking commanders who they say have been repeating the same mistakes. They questioned commanders for sending out elite troops as the first line of defense, the Institute for the Study of War reported in its most recent update.
Ex-Russian paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who is serving a life sentence for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, called Russian generals “complete morons, who don’t learn from their own mistakes” in a Telegram military blog he writes under the pseudonym Igor Strelkov.
UK defense officials said there are a number of reasons for higher Russian losses.
“The uptick in Russian casualties is likely due to a range of factors including lack of trained personnel, coordination and resources across the front — this is exemplified in Vuhledar and Bakhmut,” the Defense Intelligence update stated.
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