The country’s generals said today that more than 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine. They said they had launched a series of counterattacks across the country in an effort to push back Putin’s troops after a month of fighting. This is what the Ukraine General Staff said on Wednesday: Russian troops have now lost 15,600 men in battle, along with more than 500 tanks and 1,600 armored vehicles. The General Staff also said that Ukraine’s troops had retaken the city of Makariv, to the west of Kyiv, as photos showed them raising a Ukrainian flag from one of the buildings. In this way, Russian troops who are stuck in Irpin and Bucha could be cut off from the outside world. Another fight broke out in the south. The BBC says that a Russian tank column was destroyed by Ukrainian troops and volunteers at Voznesensk, which is 60 miles from the strategic town of Voznesensk. Attacks were also made on the city of Kherson, which had been taken.
Also, Russian troops have been forced to move around Mykolaiv because they were attacked by Ukrainian forces, the Pentagon said last night, while also reporting heavy fighting in Izyum, which is hundreds of miles away in the northeast, as Ukraine fights to keep its forces from being surrounded near the Donbass. During a briefing for journalists, a senior Pentagon source said that the US is “starting to see signs” that Ukraine’s generals are now “able and willing to take back territory.” This could be a turning point in the conflict, as Russia’s advance is coming to a halt as supplies run low.
Videos that were posted online late Tuesday appear to show one of the counterattacks, with Ukrainian troops fighting hard to the west of the city of Kyiv, firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at each other. Rob Lee, an expert on conflict from King’s University, thinks the troops are from Chechnya and are fighting in Ukraine’s Sheikh Mansur battalion, which is mostly made up of people who want to help fight. Russia continued to fire missiles at civilian areas of the city, injuring four people in two areas that are about three miles from the front lines.
City officials said in a statement on Telegram that the enemy fired on Kyiv again, and buildings in the Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts of the city were damaged. There are people who help people and people who help people at the same time. It looks like there are fires going on in a lot of homes and in high-rise buildings. Volodymyr Okhrimenko, a resident of one of the buildings that was damaged, told AFP that he almost died in the attack.
Vladimir Putin‘s army is now close to its culmination, which means that the stockpiles of ammunition, food, and fuel he built up before the invasion are running out. This means that the army will have to stop attacking and become more vulnerable to counterattacks. Ukraine’s generals said on Tuesday that Moscow’s troops had enough food and water for “no more than three days.” But it looks like resources have run out faster than that in some areas.
The goal for Ukraine now is to keep the war from turning into a bloody stalemate on its own land, which will lead to a repeat of the situation in the southern city of Mariupol. This will cause a lot of damage and casualties.
