Putin's troops flee the battlefield when their vehicles are destroyed
Terrified Russian troops flee when their armoured vehicles are destroyed by pinpoint Ukrainian fire as they leave behind wounded comrades who are forced to crawl to save their lives in shocking video
- Drone footage captures Russian soldiers under fire from artillery in Vuhledar
- Ukrainian troops have been locked in ‘fierce’ battles with Russia around Donetsk
Footage from a fierce ongoing battle around Vuhledar, southwest of Donetsk, shows Russian soldiers retreating after their five vehicles were hit by Ukrainian artillery.
The Russian troops were forced to run away and leave their wounded crawling behind them after being struck by airburst ammunition.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the situation on the frontline ‘acute’, with heavy fighting in the Donetsk region.
Moscow’s appointed leader of the Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, said: ‘The encirclement and subsequent liberation of this city [Vuhledar] solves many problems.’
But Kyiv said the town remained contested, Ukrainian military spokesman Sergiy Cherevaty insisted: ‘There is fierce combat there’.
The Ministry of Defence said on Friday that Russian forces had probably conducted probing attacks near Orikhiv and in Vuhledar, but were unlikely to have achieved ‘substantive advances.’
Footage from a fierce ongoing battle around Vuhledar, southwest of Donetsk, shows Russian soldiers retreating after their five vehicles were hit by Ukrainian artillery
The soldiers were laying down for cover beside their vehicles while being targeted by Ukrainian artillery
One injured soldier was seen crawling by himself after his comrades had fled
An aerial view shows damaged buildings, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Vuhledar
A house burns after a Russian military strike, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, near the city of Vuhledar
Russia is said to be planning a ‘new pre-emptive strike’ in Ukraine according to satellite photos which show Putin’s forces building up fortifications.
The new offensive will reportedly take place ahead of the first anniversary of their invasion on February 24.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, said: ‘Now they are preparing for maximum activation, and they believe that by the anniversary they should have some achievements.’
‘There is no secret that they are preparing for a new wave by February 24, as they themselves say,’ he told Radio Svoboda.
He also said that the Russian military has been ‘scouting’ the defence capabilities of Ukrainian troops in the Zaporizhzhia region for a week.
While analysis from Brady Africk, an open-source intelligence analyst, shows Russian new fortifications all along the front in Luhansk, from the Russian border down to Donetsk, and throughout Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
It comes as a video captured a single Russian tank being destroyed by a mine near Donetsk, in what may have been part of a spoiling attack tactic ‘to disperse and distract Ukrainian forces’ ahead of their counter-offensive.
A satellite image from March 2022 (left) and January 2023 (right) shows that Russia is building new lines of defence (trenches in picture on the right) as it reportedly prepares for an offensive next month
A high-ranking Ukrainian official said it is ‘no secret’ that Russia are preparing for a new wave by February 24 – the first anniversary of their invasion
The video begins with a single tank driving down a nearly destroyed roads as an artillery shell lands ahead of it
Shortly after the second explosion another blast is seen, possibly from the tank itself
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The satellite imagery of Moscow’s new fortifications may also show that Putin is concerned about a new Ukrainian counteroffensive – following the news of modern tanks being sent from the West.
‘They’re trying to basically consolidate their gains and keep the parts that they’ve held on to thus far,’ Africk, who works at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Beast.
‘I think it’s definitely both a message to soldiers in Ukraine, and to everyone who might be watching, that they’re going to at least try and stay.’
The news follows a video capturing the moment a Russian tank drives straight into a minefield while taking artillery fire in Ukraine.
The vehicle is seen driving down an empty road, thought to be outside Donetsk, that is surrounded by hundreds of craters from shelling.
The footage shows an artillery shell exploding about 20m ahead of the tank as it continues forward.
The tank disappears behind the cloud of smoke before it drives over a mine and sets of another explosion.
Just a second later another explosion takes place and a fireball erupts from the tank, forcing the soldiers inside to flee.
Four soldiers escape the burning wreckage of the tank and run off into the field next to the road as the video ends
The drone footage ends by showing four soldiers running away from the wreckage off into the cratered fields to the side.
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The video comes as Ukrainian troops were locked in a ‘fierce’ confrontation with Russian fighters on Friday for control of the town of Vugledar southwest of Donetsk as the two sides battle along the southern front.
Both sides claimed success in the small administrative centre of apartment blocks surrounded by flat fields, a short distance from the strategic prize of the village of Pavlivka.
‘The encirclement and subsequent liberation of this city solves many problems,’ said Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-appointed leader of the Donetsk region.
‘Soon, Vugledar may become a new, very important success for us,’ he was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
But Kyiv said the town, which had a pre-invasion population of around 15,000 people, remained contested.
‘There is fierce combat there,’ Ukrainian military spokesman Sergiy Cherevaty told local media.
‘For many months, the military of the Russian Federation… has been trying to achieve significant success there,’ he said.
A woman walks near a residential building destroyed by a Russian missile attack in the town of Glevakha, Kyiv region
A burned tank sits next to a road in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine
Ukrainian servicemen take cover as they fire a mortar load on the Donbass frontline
Ukrainian soldiers are seen on their ways to the frontlines with their armored military vehicles as the strikes continue on the Donbass frontline
Moscow’s push for Vugledar is part of its effort to seize control of the entire Donetsk region, which it has already declared a part of Russia.
Ukraine said this week that Russian troops had stepped up their attacks in the east, particularly on Vugledar and Bakhmut.
While the Ministry of Defence said that Russia is highly likely to have suffered more than 300 casualties in a strike on troop accommodation at Makiivka near Donetsk City on January 01
In a rare admission, Russia’s defence ministry said 89 soldiers had died in the fiery blast which destroyed the temporary barracks in a former vocational college.
The MoD assessed that the majority of troops were likely killed or missing, rather than wounded.
Rubble is strewn across the ground in Russian-occupied Makiivka, in the eastern Donbas region, in the aftermath of the strike. The missiles hit a vocational school which had been turned into a barracks for Russian forces
The MoD tweeted: ‘Russian officials likely assessed that it was not viable to avoid comment in the face of widespread criticism of Russian commanders over the incident.
‘The difference between the number of casualties Russia acknowledged and the likely true total highlights the pervasive presence of disinformation in Russian public announcements.
‘This typically comes about through a combination of deliberate lying authorised by senior leaders, and the communication of inaccurate reports by more junior officials, keen to downplay their failings in Russia’s ‘blame and sack’ culture.’
According to a White House National Security Council assessment, Russia is currently using the cold winter months to regroup, retrain, re-equip, and prepare for next steps in the war.
The United States is helping Ukraine prepare to go on the counteroffensive against Russia, according to White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
Russia test launches the feared Sarmat ‘Satan 2’ missile in April last year, as the nuclear threat remains high
The European Union’s defence chief said yesterday that Russia is now engaged in ‘a war against Nato and the West’ as Canada became the 12th country to commit tanks to Ukraine.
Stefano Sannino, the secretary general of the EU’s external action service, suggested Vladimir Putin had moved beyond his initial ‘special military operation’ and was ‘moving the war into a different stage’.
Mr Sannino was speaking as Canada became the latest country to pledge tanks and Poland said it would give an additional 60 to the 14 it has already committed to the war effort.
Spain and Norway are expected to announce how many Leopard 2s they will send to Ukraine in the coming days.
The Kremlin test launches an ‘unstoppable’ nuclear Zircon hypersonic missile from the Admiral Gorshkov
Stefano Sannino (pictured), the secretary general of the EU’s external action service, suggested Vladimir Putin was ‘moving the war into a different stage’
Belgium announced a new package of military aid, promising cash, missiles, machineguns and armoured vehicles, but had to admit it has no main battle tanks to match the offers from its Nato allies.
Ukraine is also seeking Western fourth-generation fighter jets such as the US F-16, although this remains an unlikely prospect.
Mr Sannino said Ukraine’s allies had been forced to increase and upgrade their military support to Kyiv in response to Moscow shifting the focus of the war to the West.
Addressing reporters in Tokyo, he said: ‘I think that this latest development in terms of armed supply is just an evolution of the situation and of the way Russia has started moving the war into a different stage.’
Putin (pictured yesterday) has stepped up attempts to break through Ukraine’s defences with heavy fighting in the east of the country
The spectre of nuclear war looms over the world after the West supplied state-of-the-art tanks to Ukraine to the fury of Vladimir Putin
He added that Russia was making ‘indiscriminate attacks’ on civilians and cities. The country was desperate to gain momentum on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine before the Western tank squadrons arrive.
In the past 48 hours, Moscow’s forces have been attempting to break through Ukraine’s frontlines in the Donbas region. From Thursday night into yesterday morning Russia also subjected Ukrainian cities to more bomb attacks.
Some 47 of the 59 missiles were intercepted but 11 people are understood to have been killed in explosions caused by the Russian ordnance which penetrated Ukraine’s air defence systems. Russia also launched 37 air strikes.
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