[ad_1]
In recent days, the city of Soledar has become the latest killing field in Ukraine.
Russian forces appear to have finally taken control of at least most of the devastated communities in the eastern Donbas region – but not before the Ukrainian army took heavy casualties.
Both sides have frequent and unverifiable claims inflicting many victims on the other, but the Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Hanna Maliar described the situation in particularly harrowing detail.
“The enemy is literally avoiding the dead bodies of their own soldiers, using artillery, volley fire systems and mortars, even covering their own soldiers,” he wrote on social media.
With unverifiable estimates from the Ukrainian side putting Russian losses in the past few weeks in the thousands injured or killed, the cost of capturing Soledar has been catastrophic for Russia, said Oleksiy Melnyk, a former Ukrainian Air Force lieutenant colonel who is now with Razumkov. Center, a Kiev-based think-tank.
“Ukrainian military command [is] trying to kill a lot of Russians and newly mobilized mercenaries,” he told CBC News.
He said the heavy Russian losses justified Ukraine’s efforts to cling to the city, despite its strategic insignificance.
More broadly, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said this week that over the past seven months that Russian forces have fought in Soledar and in nearby Bakhmut, their losses have been between 10,000 and 20,000 people killed or wounded.
Melnyk said he believes Ukraine’s short-term goal is to try to keep Russia in check to make it harder for the Russian army and regular mercenaries to launch further attacks this winter and spring — even though Ukrainian losses are already high. also.
“[Both sides] trying to prevent others from conducting other offensive operations,” Melnyk said.
Before Soledar became a battlefield, the city was most famous as the site of a large tunnel complex used for salt mining.
Stretching from the city to hundreds of kilometers underground, part of the maze of salt tunnels is accessible to the public, creating an unusual local tourist attraction.
Russia’s main target since the summer is the nearby town of Bakhmut, about 10 kilometers away. But at the end of December, the Russian mercenary forces of the Wagner Group – which had been spearheading a long, breaking head-on attack – instead turned the attack to the north and made Soledar the focus.
Melynk said Wagner’s forces, controlled and paid for by Russian business tycoon Yevgeny Prigozhin, were determined to let President Vladimir Putin win at any cost, to strengthen Prigozhin’s influence with the Kremlin, and to embarrass rival commanders in Russian Defense. Ministry.
Taking too many casualties was not a consideration, he said.
“We see how Russia treats the mobilized people – they are not people,” Melnyk said.
In September, Russia activated about 300,000 soldiers, most of whom are believed to have previous military experience, and sent about half directly to Ukraine. Others were kept in reserve and given more training.
Melnyk said that Ukraine’s Defense Minister expects Russia to be ready to send its remaining mobilized soldiers to the front, intending to start offensive operations in Donbas after a succession of defeats in the fall and summer.
The reappointment this week of Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s top general and one of the key planners of last year’s February 24 invasion, as the senior commander in Ukraine is seen as another sign that Russia is planning to move forward.
At the same time, Ukrainian forces have also re-equipped and strengthened their units with modern Western-made equipment in anticipation of their own counterattack.
Russia’s loss in Bakhmut may force its commanders to send troops from other areas, opening up the possibility of Ukraine continuing its offensive to recapture Russian-held territory.
Almost the same tactics were used by the Ukrainian generals in the summer and autumn, when the Russians captured the Donbas city of Severodonetsk, but at such a high cost that their army could not hold an area of thousands of square kilometers in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
Melnyk said he hopes Ukrainian strategists are now thinking the same.
“There are two different and simultaneous preparations on the front line (northern and southern regions), and where the conditions are the best, then it will be real (to attack).
Nick Reynolds of the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has been closely studying the Russian troop deployment, but he said it was impossible to know whether the newly mobilized forces would have enough training and equipment to attack.
“It’s impossible for him to do that strongly,” he told CBC News in an interview.
“I think it’s more about units that can hold the line or move forward gradually.”
Kyvi-based military analyst Oleh Zhdanov, a colonel in the Ukrainian Air Force reserve, also doubts that the introduction of Russian mobilization recruitment will be enough for his forces to regain the initiative.
“They don’t have time for proper preparation and modern weaponry, and with each wave of conscription, the quality of conscripts and the quality of equipment will decrease,” Zhdanov told CBC News.
He sees the real value for the Kremlin in taking Soledar as largely political, because the Russian propaganda outlet will be used to rally people to support the war – and to prevent Western countries from sending arms to Ukraine.
“They will say to the West that tomorrow we are ready to take Kyiv,” Zhdanov said.
Reynolds, a RUSI analyst, said that he was not convinced before, now he believes that the advanced air defense systems provided by Western countries in the past month, including the NASAMS and Patriot defense systems, show that Western countries are ready to help Ukraine in the long term . , which will prevent the conflict from becoming a stalemate.
“The Ukrainians won,” he said.
On Saturday, Britain announced it would send 12 modern Challenger 2 battle tanks to Ukraine, and Poland said it plans to send German-made Leopard 2 tanks — if the German government agrees and agrees to send its own Leopard.
Ukraine says it needs hundreds of Western tanks if it wants to retake all the territory Russia has controlled since it seized Crimea in 2014.
However, the attempt to capture Soledar and the relentless trench warfare in Bakhmut were also very costly for Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government rarely discusses casualty numbers, but Zhdanov, a Ukrainian military analyst, said dozens of people die around Bakhmut every day.
“I would say (the ratio of casualties) one to eight, or one to 10,” he told CBC News, which estimates 50 or 60 Ukrainian combat deaths per day for every 500 or 600 Russians.
The latest United Nations estimates of civilian deaths in the war are now more than three months old and may understate casualties.
The UN says at least 6,100 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, but Zhdanov says the actual number of casualties from Russian aerial and missile bombardments in Ukrainian cities is more than 10 times higher.
[ad_2]
Source link