Recently, the Russian army opened a new front in Ukraine, launching an offensive in the Kharkiv region. However, the attack by Vladimir Putin's army turned into a disaster.
Like other points on the front, the Russian army simply throws its soldiers into the meat grinder and does not care about the number of casualties it will give. A Russian soldier told how the Ukrainians literally chopped the occupiers into small pieces, but the Russian commanders only kept repeating “back and forth”, reported The Guardian.
Anton Andreev, a Russian soldier from the 1009th Motorized Rifle Regiment, painted a grim picture of the Russian offensive on Kharkiv. His company was decimated, he said, with only 12 of 100 soldiers still alive as they came under constant Ukrainian fire and drones in Vovchansk, a key target of Russia's advance.
„The Ukrainians are just cutting us. We come under machine gun fire, under drones in broad daylight, like meat. And the commanders only tell us to move forward”, Andreev said in his video.
At the beginning of the offensive, Russia managed to capture several settlements, taking advantage of the acute lack of ammunition in the ZSU, but the Ukrainians gradually stabilized the front and at the moment there is no risk of the encirclement of Kharkiv. In addition, more and more Western weapons are reaching the front, which is of great importance to Kiev.
„I don't know if I will get out of this or not, but I have to say it to honor the memory of those who died like meat here because of certain personalities,” Andreev said in the clip. We are involved in a massacre, he adds.
Russian state media and senior officials continue to claim that its troops are advancing in the direction of Kharkiv. Putin claims that Russian losses are “of course several times less than on the Ukrainian side” and the Kremlin goes to great lengths to ensure that confessions like Andreev's are kept from the public.
Putin's regime got rid of Russian voices that criticized the country's military leadership. Prigozhin was killed, and Strelkov is behind bars. A cohort of influential war bloggers is now largely toeing the government's line, painting an optimistic picture of Moscow's progress while predicting Ukraine's immediate collapse. But dozens of posts appeared on social media with Russians searching for missing relatives in the Kharkiv offensive, hinting at the staggeringly high number of casualties Moscow continues to suffer.
Despite mass casualties, overall support for the war in Russia remains high, driven in part by continuous state propaganda and a lack of alternative viewpoints. A survey published by the independent polling agency Levada shows that 79% of Russians support the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine. However, half supported the start of peace talks, while almost 40% said they would prefer to return to the period before Moscow invaded Ukraine.
Ukraine is facing shortages of ammunition, fighters and air defenses and is also suffering heavy casualties. And while the Russian offensive in Kharkiv appears to have stalled for now, it has succeeded in at least one of its goals: drawing Ukrainian critical reserves into the region, away from defensive positions in the east.