How Russia was defeated in Ukraine’s bloodiest battle losing 300 troops a day & 130 tanks in kill zone carnage | The Sun
RUSSIA has suffered one of its worst defeats since the start of the war in Ukraine losing up to 300 soldiers a day and leaving more than 100 military vehicles destroyed.
The failure of Putin's forces to take Vuhledar, a small town in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, is seen as a major humiliation for the Russian army.
Reports claim Russian vehicles were caught in a bottleneck as they advanced along narrow roads and were blown up by mines or picked off by the Ukrainians.
In a video shared from the frontline, one Russian soldier described the carnage around the coal mining town as a "f***fest".
Ukrainian military sources claim that its army has wiped out the elite 155th naval infantry during the storming of Vuhledar.
Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, from the Tavriskiy District of Ukrainian defence forces, told Politico: "A large number of enemy forces, including the command staff, were destroyed near Vuhledar and Mariinka in Donetsk Oblast.
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"In addition, over the past week, the enemy lost about 130 units of equipment, including 36 units of tanks."
He added that Russian forces were losing between 150 and 300 marines a day during the recent fighting near Vuhledar.
Dmytrashkivskyi estimated that all of the 5,000-strong brigade had been either killed, wounded, or taken as prisoners of war.
"The 155th brigade already had to be restaffed three times," he said. "The first time after Irpin and Bucha, the second time they were defeated near Donetsk – they recovered again.
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"And now almost the entire brigade has already been destroyed near Vuhledar."
Ukrainian military sources have also given a breakdown of the 137 pieces of Russian military equipment they estimate have been destroyed, abandoned, or captured during the failed Vuhledar offensive.
These include 57 tanks, 69 infantry fighting vehicles, seven specialised vehicles, and four trucks.
Previous reports of Russian forces having to use out-of-date maps have also been blamed for the defeat.
Now almost the entire brigade has already been destroyed near Vuhledar
The losses come just days after Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu described the offensive as "successful".
It also appears to show a lack of control of the army at the highest level.
This devastating defeat is likely to be a further blow to the hopes of Russian ultranationalists and military bloggers, who believed that the Kremlin was planning a major offensive to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Putin's invasion.
In a report, the Institute for the Study of War said that pro-military commentators had been slamming their commanders for sending their elite troops to the frontline to be slaughtered en masse.
Some have called for the public trials of high-ranking officers for continuing to repeat the same mistakes.
Russian former paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who was jailed for life in absentia for the downing of the MH17 passenger flight in 2014, has branded Russia's generals "complete morons, who don't learn from their own mistakes".
Writing on his military blog on the messaging app Telegram, he said that the Ukrainian artillery had been more accurate than the Russians, and described it as "like in a shooting gallery".
He warned his Russian audience that the defeat could be the end of the offensive on the entire Donetsk front.
The Ukrainian military has also shared videos showing the apparent chaos of the Russian frontline near Vuhledar.
One video shared by Ukraine's marines shows panicked Russian troops falling on the battlefield as they are picked off one by one.
A Ukrainian artilleryman is heard joking that they should "go make a cemetery" for the fallen Russians.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Justin Crump, a former tank commander with the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars, said that the Russians around Vuhledar seemed to have been overcome by "madness".
He said: "Given the ever-present threat from mines, they may be assuming that using the same route eventually allows them to clear the obstacle – but as Ukraine is using artillery-delivered mines, that rarely seems to be true.
"Repeating the same thing time after time and hoping for a different outcome is a sign of madness – or deficiency in capability and initiative."
The picture is less positive for Ukraine in the city of Bakhmut, 65 miles northeast of Vuhledar.
Here, The Sun has been inside the WW1-style trenches surrounding the city as the Ukrainians face an enormous Russian onslaught.
On Friday, Putin's war chief and head of the Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that Bakhmut is "practically surrounded".
In a video, he called on President Volodymyr Zelensky to withdraw his forces from the city.
But experts say that even if Bakhmut falls to the Russian forces, it will not be worth the heavy losses.
And it may even play into the hands of the Ukrainians if they launch a planned counter-offensive later this year.
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Mr Crump went on: "We have reached a point… where taking ground at such a slow rate is pretty meaningless if Russia wears itself out doing it.
"Infinite manpower is a myth and not easy to replace."
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