Putin’s latest battlefield humiliation: Ukraine thwarts Russian battalion’s river-crossing and destroys dozens of vehicles inflicting heavy casualties ‘after sound of tugboat engines gave the game away’
- Russia was attempting to cross the Donets river at Bilohorivka to surround the city of Lysychansk, in Donbas
- But Ukrainian engineer claims to have successfully guessed where they would try to cross and laid a trap
- Sound of tugboats putting temporary bridge in place triggered a massive artillery and airstrike barrage
- Satellite images show bridge was destroyed along with dozens of Russian vehicles, inflicting heavy casualties
Russia has suffered yet another battlefield humiliation after Ukraine successfully thwarted its attempt to cross a river in Donbas, destroying dozens of vehicles and inflicting heavy casualties.
Satellite images lay bare the scale of the failure with the remains of two pontoon bridges drifting in the Donets River at Bilohorivka, west of the city of Lysychansk, surrounded by the ruins of tanks and armoured vehicles.
It appears Russian commanders were attempting to surround Lysychansk – and its sister city of Severodonetsk – with the crossing, but saw their sneak-attack turn into a massacre when Ukraine correctly guessed their plans.
‘Maxim’, a Twitter user claiming to be a Ukrainian military engineer, says he identified the spot where Russia was most-likely to try crossing the river on May 7 and told his commanders to listen out for the sound of tugboat engines pushing a pontoon bridge into place as a sure sign that a crossing was imminent.
On the morning of May 8 Russia blanketed the river with smoke by burning nearby fields and throwing smoke grenades, he said, but commanders detected the sound of boat engines and called in artillery strikes.
‘Roughly 20 minutes after recon unit confirmed the Russian bridge was being mounted, heavy artillery engaged against Russian forces, and then aviation chipped in as well. I was still in the area, and I have never seen or heard such heavy combat in my life,’ Maxim said.
‘After one day of combat, 9th May morning the bridge was down. Some Russian forces – roughly 30 to 50 vehicles and infantry – were stuck on the Ukrainian side of the river with no way back. They tried to run away using the broken bridge. Then they tried to arrange a new bridge.
‘Aviation started heavy bombing of the area and it destroyed all the remains of Russians there, and the other bridge they tried to make. Rumors say it’s 1,500 Russian dead. Their strategic objective was to cross the river and then encircle Lysychansk. They miserably failed.’
Russian troop losses in the bombardment are almost impossible to estimate, but online observers have so-far counted 58 destroyed vehicles including at least seven tanks and dozens of armoured infantry carriers.
At least one tugboat appears to have been wiped out, along with two pontoon bridges left floating in the river with shell-holes visible in the top of them.
It is just the latest defeat for Putin’s forces, after a successful Ukrainian counter-attack pushed Russian troops away from the city of Kharkiv and back across the border. It means Ukrainian artillery can now threaten the town of Vovchansk, which contains a key highway and rail line supplying Russian forces in Donbas.
Ukrainian commanders said late Wednesday that Russia’s offensive has now halted around Izyum, Kherson and Melitopol as Putin’s men are forced onto the defensive after running out of momentum.
If confirmed, it means the only active section of the frontline is in the southern portion of the Donbas – between Severodonetsk and Avdiivka, where limited Russian attacks are taking place – and in Mariupol where Ukrainian troops are still holding out inside the Azovstal steel works.
Though the fight is far from over, a stalled Russian advance and Ukrainian counter-attacks are what preceded Russia’s retreat from Kyiv earlier in the war. A similar retreat from Donbas would spell disaster for Putin.
In its Thursday-morning update on the frontline, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said: ‘Russia’s prioritisation of operations in the Donbas has left elements deployed in Kharkiv vulnerable to the mobile, and highly motivated, Ukrainian counter-attacking force.
‘Despite Russia’s success in encircling Kharkiv in the initial stages of the conflict, it has reportedly withdrawn units from the region to reorganise and replenish its forces following heavy losses.
‘Once reconstituted, these forces will likely deploy to the eastern bank of the Donets River, forming a blocking force to protect the western flank of Russia’s main force concentration and main supply routes for operations in the vicinity of Izyum.
‘The withdrawal of Russian forces from Kharkiv is a tactic recognition of Russia’s inability to capture key Ukrainian cities where they expected limited resistance from the population.’
Ukraine announced it will hold its first war crimes trial over the Russian invasion, as Moscow accused Kyiv of shelling a Russian city in the war’s latest flashpoint.
The conflict has devastated cities and displaced millions, with fears also growing of its broader international impact as gas supplies to Europe were disrupted by a halt in Russian flows through Ukraine.
Kyiv has repeatedly accused Russian troops of committing atrocities since the invasion began on February 24, and Ukrainian authorities said Wednesday they would launch the first war crimes trial of the conflict.
The prosecutor general’s office said Vadim Shishimarin, a 21-year-old Russian service member, is accused of killing an unarmed 62-year-old civilian as he fled with four other soldiers in a stolen car.
‘The man died on the spot just a few dozen metres from his home,’ said a statement from prosecutor Iryna Venediktova’s office.
Shishimarin faces possible life imprisonment if found guilty.
Venediktova’s office has said it has received reports of more than 10,000 alleged war crimes, with 622 suspects identified.
The Russian invasion has sparked an exodus of nearly six million civilians, many of whom bear accounts of torture, sexual violence and indiscriminate destruction.
The UN Human Rights Council is due to hold a special session on Ukraine on Thursday.
Moscow has focused on eastern and southern Ukraine since it failed to take Kyiv in the first weeks of its campaign.
Ukraine’s forces were boosted by what Kyiv described as the recapture of four villages around the northeastern city of Kharkiv, close to the border with Russia.
In the Russian city of Belgorod, around 70 kilometres (43 miles) from Kharkiv, authorities said one person was killed and six injured by Ukrainian shelling.
Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said it was ‘the most difficult situation’ facing the border region since Russia sent its troops into Ukraine 11 weeks ago.
Authorities in Russian regions bordering Ukraine have repeatedly accused Ukrainian forces of launching attacks.
In April, Gladkov said Ukrainian helicopters carried out a strike on a fuel storage facility in Belgorod.
In southern Ukraine, the pro-Kremlin authorities in the city of Kherson urged Putin to annex the region.
Kherson was the first major Ukrainian city to fall in the current conflict. It lies north of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of Kherson’s Moscow-installed administration, said there would be a ‘request to make Kherson region a full subject of the Russian Federation’.
The Kremlin replied it was up to the residents of Kherson to ‘determine their own fate’.
Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said Kherson would be liberated and ‘the invaders may ask to join even Mars or Jupiter’.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has framed his nation’s resistance to the Russian invasion as a ‘war against tyranny’, but the fierce fightback has carried a heavy cost.
In a rare release of battle casualty figures, Ukraine’s National Guard said Wednesday that 561 of its members have been killed and nearly 1,700 wounded since the invasion began.
Neither the defence ministry in Kyiv nor its counterpart in Moscow has provided official death counts, but in mid-April, Zelensky said between 2,500 and 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed.
Ukraine’s effort to hold the Russian-speaking Donbas region in the east has also become increasingly desperate.
‘They come in waves,’ volunteer fighter Mykola said of the repeated Russian attempts to push past a strategic river near a rural settlement called Bilogorivka.
Much of the world has moved to isolate Putin as punishment for the invasion.
Russia ‘is today the most direct threat to the world order with the barbaric war against Ukraine,’ European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Tokyo Thursday after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Kishida, whose government joined the tough measures against Moscow, added: ‘Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not just a matter for Europe, but it shakes the core of the international order including Asia. This must not be tolerated.’
Russia has been hit with a wave of punishing economic sanctions that have started to take a toll on its foreign exchange reserves.
Zelensky said Wednesday that he had spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about boosting penalties on Moscow.
‘Step by step we are doing everything to make the aggressor feel the biggest pain from the aggression,’ the Ukrainian leader said.
But ramping up the embargoes has not been straightforward, with concern among some nations in Europe that rely on Russian gas.
Kyiv said Wednesday that Russia had halted gas supplies through a key transit hub in the east.
The stoppage caused supplies to plunge by 25 percent in Germany, which is dependent on Russia for its energy and has rejected an immediate full embargo on Russian gas.
The invasion of Ukraine has also prompted Sweden and Finland to consider NATO membership.
Finland was due to reveal its position on joining the bloc on Thursday.
A Ukrainian commander in Mariupol appealed directly to Elon Musk on Wednesday, asking the world’s richest man to intervene on behalf of those trapped by Russian forces in the southern port city.
The war has devastated Mariupol, where Ukrainians have sustained a pocket of resistance at a steel factory.
Iryna Yegorchenko, 43, learned Wednesday that her soldier son Artem had died protecting the Azovstal plant.
‘I suddenly felt relieved,’ she told AFP.
The 22-year-old was crushed during the collapse of a structure and ‘quickly went to God’, said Yegorchenko, who lives in Kyiv.
‘He decided to defend his homeland, his people… I have nothing to be ashamed of as a mother.’
Source: Read Full Article
