Casualties and desertions rise as net tightens
Cases of desertion are growing every week in the Ukrainian army, according to a leaked intelligence report, as up to 200 of its outgunned soldiers are being killed every day in the eastern Donbas region.
Kyiv’s troops are outnumbered 20 to one in artillery and 40 to one in ammunition by the Kremlin’s forces in the area, the leaked Ukrainian intelligence report reveals.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the battle over the war-torn country’s industrial heartlands was so intense that Kyiv was suffering up to 200 military casualties per day. The previous upper limit was given as 100 soldiers.
Russia has managed to gain the upper hand in the Donbas because of its superior long-range weaponry. Podolyak said Kyiv’s armed forces needed donations of hundreds of the most powerful artillery systems to compete with Moscow’s forces, not the handful being sent by Western governments.
The dossier, drawn up by Ukrainian and Western officials, warns of the growing risk of demoralised Ukrainian soldiers going AWOL. The worsening situation in the Donbas is having a ‘‘seriously demoralising effect on Ukrainian forces as well as a very real material effect – cases of desertion are growing every week’’, according to the report, seen by The Independent.
Using heavy artillery for cover, the Russian military has restarted its attempt to encircle the pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the two halves of the eastern Donbas region.
In Severodonetsk, the last major Ukrainian-held city in Luhansk, Ukrainian troops face constant bombardment with little means of hitting back at Russia’s artillery positions. Russia has also resumed offensive operations to encircle their defensive positions and cut off supply lines into the city.
If the Kremlin’s offensive drive is successful, it would leave Ukrainian troops almost entirely encircled by Russia’s forces in Severodonetsk. Zelenskyy has said that the fate of the Donbas lies in the fierce fight for the embattled city.
Local officials have bemoaned the lack of long-range firepower available to Ukrainian troops, with Russians able to strike them from vast distances.
‘‘The Ukrainian side has almost completely run out of stocks of missiles for MLRS of Smerch and Uragan types, which made it possible to effectively deter Russian offensives in the first months of the war at distances of 60 to 80km,’’ the intelligence report says. ‘‘Today, the maximum range of fire of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is 25km.’’
Western governments, including Britain and the United States, have promised to send Kyiv powerful multiple-launch rocket systems capable of striking targets up to 130km away, but deliveries have been slow, sources say.
As the Kremlin’s forces continue a grinding war of attrition in the east, Russian President Vladimir Putin has likened his actions to those of Peter the Great in the 18th century, saying the country needs to ‘‘take back’’ historic Russian lands.
Putin yesterday drew parallels between Peter the Great’s founding of St Petersburg and modern-day Russia’s ambitions.
‘‘What was (Peter) doing?
Taking back and reinforcing,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s what he did. And it looks like it fell on us to take back and reinforce as well.’’
Putin also appeared to leave the door open for further Russian territorial expansion. ‘‘It’s impossible ... to build a fence around a country like Russia. And we do not intend to build that fence,’’ he said.
■ Russia is expected to use the death sentences handed down to two British men captured while fighting in Ukraine to intensify its push for a prisoner exchange with a close personal friend of Putin.
Aiden Aslin, 28, Shaun Pinner, 48, and Moroccan man Brahim Saadoun were found guilty of ‘‘mercenary activities’’ by a court in eastern Ukraine’s separatist regions. Both Britons had served in the Ukrainian military for several years, and were captured as Russian forces seized the port city of Mariupol.
Britain has condemned the verdict as a ‘‘sham’’, saying the pair’s enlistment in Kyiv’s army entitled them to prisoner of war status under the Geneva Convention.
Pavel Kosovan, one of their appointed lawyers, said the pair would ‘‘likely file for a pardon’’, raising the possibility of a prisoner exchange. They have a month to appeal the verdict.
Shortly after they surrendered in April with other members of Ukraine’s 36th Marine brigade, Aslin and Pinner were paraded on Russian state TV, pleading with the British government to exchange them with Viktor Medvedchuk, who led the most prominent pro-Russian political coalition in Ukraine until he was arrested and charged with treason in May 2021. Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter.