The Ukrainian military lost “dozens” of pieces of Western hardware and hundreds of troops in an unsuccessful attack on Russian positions in Zaporozhye Region, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday.
The previous night’s assault came as part of a far wider Ukrainian counteroffensive raging across the entire frontline from Zaporozhye to Donetsk.
The attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s (AFU) 65th Mechanised Brigade was repelled by the troops of Russia’s 58th Combined-Arms Army and Vostok-Akhmat battalion. The Russian Defense Ministry did not say exactly how many Ukrainian troops were killed or wounded, instead placing the losses in the “hundreds.”
In a separate statement on Tuesday, the head of Russia’s State Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, announced that Kiev had lost 900 soldiers across the entire front to deaths and injuries in the preceding 24 hours.
According to the ministry, captured Ukrainian servicemen told Russian troops that they had been “deceived” by their commanders with promises of reinforcements and misled about the true strength of Russian forces in the area. “Otherwise,” the ministry said in a statement, “there would be no one willing to launch an offensive.”
In video footage released by the ministry, one captured Ukrainian described a situation of “complete incompetence” on the ground, in which brigades operate alongside one another with no cross-communication and commanders knowingly send Western Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles into the range of Russian anti-tank missiles.
The captured soldier claimed that his commanders have failed to remove bodies from Ukrainian lines, and that some corpses have been left to decompose since the counteroffensive began almost two weeks ago. “It’s just a nightmare,” the soldier said. “A real meat grinder.”
Ukraine’s long-promised counteroffensive began on June 5 with a failed attack on Russian positions near Donetsk. Wave after wave of attacks followed, all of which Russian forces managed to rebuff before their multi-layered warren of trenches, minefields, and fortifications could be breached.
As of last week, Moscow put Ukrainian losses at around 7,500 men and 30% of its Western-supplied tanks and armored vehicles. Kartapolov put the losses closer to 20,000, but did not explain his sources.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Anna Malyar, said on Tuesday that while the situation on the battlefield “is quite difficult” at the moment, Kiev’s “biggest blow” against Russian forces “is yet to come.”