'It's Like A Turkey Shoot': Ukranians Describe Russian Troops Dying in Donetsk

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The scenes are chaotic: Russian tanks veering wildly before exploding or driving straight into minefields, men running in every direction, some on fire, the bodies of soldiers caught in tank tracks.

Russian military bloggers are calling it a fiasco, and worse.

These scenes have been recorded by Ukrainian military drones over the past two weeks around the town of Vuhledar in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, where successive Russian assaults have failed.

The Vuhledar debacle suggests chronic failures in the command and tactics of the Russians as they gear up for a spring offensive. If replicated elsewhere on the long military front in Donetsk and Luhansk, such failings could jeopardize the Kremlin’s plans to seize more territory.

About 20 videos geolocated by CNN show basic tactical blunders in an area that’s open and flat, where Ukrainian spotters on higher ground can direct artillery strikes and where minefields are worsening Russian casualties.

[link to www.cnn.com (secure)]


Russia has suffered some of the heaviest military losses in a single battle since the start of the war after elite units repeatedly tried to storm a fortified coal mining town in broad daylight.

Ukrainian officials claim huge numbers of enemy troops have been killed, wounded and captured in failed attempts to seize the Donetsk hamlet of Vuhledar.

They say that one marine brigade of 5,000 men was almost entirely destroyed, for the third time since the Kremlin launched the full-scale invasion nearly a year ago.

The carnage – and loss of at least 130 armoured vehicles – led Russian hardliners to call for public show trials to punish incompetent generals responsible for the repeated battlefield massacres of their soldiers.

‘Some of them are complete cretins – all the mistakes that were made before were repeated,’ said Igor Girkin, a Russian former intelligence officer who helped stage the pro-Moscow 2014 insurgencies in Donetsk and Crimea. Girkin complained that Russian soldiers were mown down ‘like turkeys in a shooting range’ as Ukrainians held higher positions.

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Last Edited by Captain KC Jones on 02/13/2023 06:57 PM