This is how Russian soldiers escaped from the Ukrainian counteroffensive

Just the mere fact that Russia has lost in just one week more than 3,000 square kilometers occupied in the Kharkov region, in the northeast of Ukraine, already speaks of the wear and tear of troops who have spent more than 200 days at war.

An exhaustion that is also so evident that not even the excuses of the Russian Defense Ministry, which claims to be “regrouping” his army in Donetsk, in the south, have been able to justify the Russian withdrawal in the face of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.

Much less have they served to cover the most obvious signs of physical and moral collapse of the Kremlin soldiers, who tried to flee as best they could a few hours after the Ukrainians arrived in the area. And that how could they includes desperate measures, such as steal bikes and dress up in civilian clothes to impersonate locals and escape unseen.

This is confirmed by witnesses consulted by Washington Post, which has also been able to verify a series of videos published on social networks showing the material that the military left behind during the chaotic and hasty Russian exodus. “They threw their weapons to the ground and fled“, they maintain.

Some, even from areas further from the front line, such as Crimea, stole motorcycles and vehicles (some parked in garages) to leave Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

[Jefes militares rusos huyen de Crimea para esquivar la purga de Putin tras la derrota en Járkov]

After the attack, numerous armored vehicles and tanks, some ready for combat, some waiting to be repaired and others in flames, perhaps destroyed by the Russians themselves, appeared near Izium. A strategic city in the northeast of the country recovered by the Ukrainians and which has served logistics base for Russia during this time.

Hence, in the images released by the Ukrainian army you can see, among other instruments of war, engineering vehicles, self-propelled mortars and supply trucks.

This supposes enormous losses of military armament for Russia and that the analyst Jakub Janovskcollaborator of Oryxan intelligence blog that tallies Russian and Ukrainian military losses based on photos sent from the war zone.

According to their preliminary calculations, Russia lost 40 tanks, 50 infantry vehicles, 35 armor and two aircraft since the start of the counteroffensive in Kharkov.

The Russian military analysis group Conflict Intelligence Teambased in Tbilisi, Georgia, estimated that the losses of equipment and personnel were so terrible that it lowered the combat capacity of the Russian army in Ukraine from “able to attack” a “capable of limited defense“, as collected Washington Post.

This inability to keep their military units active adds to the difficulties in replace themin part, because of the heavy blow that Western sanctions represent for the manufacture of weapons.

[El líder checheno Kadyrov, de aliado de Putin a crítico: “Hay que explicarle lo que está pasando”]

In this sense, the British Ministry of Defense has explained in its daily informative part that Russia “is most likely obtaining more and more weapons from other heavily sanctioned states, such as Iran and North Korea, as its own stocks decrease. “.

A proof of this is the russian kamikaze drone of Iranian manufacture, the Shahed-136, which the Ukrainian forces have encountered for the first time in Kupyansk, in the Kharkov area.