Nearly three months after launching an invasion in Ukraine, Russia continues to suffer heavy losses of hardware and personnel As battles rage in the east and south of the war-torn country.
On Friday, The Daily Beast reported that an entire Russian battalion was decimated while attempting to cross a bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River in the Luhansk region.
“New satellite images from BlackSky intelligence firm show the parts that remain of a pontoon bridge built by Russian troops to access the Ukrainian territory. Images showed smoke rising from the bridge after it was hit by Ukrainian artillery on May 10, leaving Russian tanks and trucks protruding from the water. It is unclear how many Russian troops died in the strike, but Forbes put its estimate at around 1,000 troops and 50 tanks,” the news outlet reported.
Britain’s defense intelligence said almost all of the Russian force’s armored vehicles were lost in the battle.
According to a new report from the BBC, Russian forces have been relentless in their three fruitless attempts to establish bridges to cross the river because “Vladimir Putin has order it.”
The orders to take the territory came from “the very top,” Ukrainian defense analyst Oleh Zhdanov told the news outlet.
“They are advancing so hard because it is a political task, because Putin has ordered it,” Zhdanov said, adding that holding the area is crucial to a plan to encircle the city of Severodonetsk, as the Kremlin is directing its troops to cut off Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbas region.
Read it at The Daily Beast.