Just as the Russian army surprises western military personnel with fatal mistakes in their attack on Ukraine, the Ukrainians surprise with an unexpectedly tough and intelligent resistance. Now it was a Russian tank battalion that fell victim to the Ukrainian artillery. How this counterattack came about.
The Ukrainian army apparently inflicted a particularly heavy loss on a Russian tank battalion. The unit came under devastating artillery fire as around 1,000 Russian soldiers with 50 armored vehicles crossed a pontoon bridge over the Donets River, US magazine Forbes reported.
Always informed: The course of the war in Ukraine in the ticker – debris field on the river: Ukraine destroys Russian pontoon bridge – apparently hundreds of dead
According to their own statements, the Ukrainian troops destroyed two pontoon bridges belonging to the Russian military during their artillery attacks with 122-millimeter howitzers. “Bilohorivka is just withstanding the Russian onslaught, our defenders twice destroyed pontoon bridges,” wrote the oblast’s military governor Serhiy Hajday on Thursday in the Telegram news service. A third bridge will surely soon be destroyed. The military governor also presented drone footage of several dozen destroyed vehicles and armored vehicles. The pictures were already circulating the day before. Artillerymen of the 17th Tank Brigade from Kryvyi Rih are said to have struck the blow.
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According to a Ukrainian officer source, Putin’s tanks were said to have been spotted with the help of reconnaissance drones. However, the information has not yet been confirmed by independent sources. According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, the units were subsequently destroyed. According to Forbes, the Ukrainians managed to destroy about three dozen tanks and other armored vehicles.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry cynically commented on the attack by the destroyed pontoons on Twitter, including aerial photos: “The 17th Armored Brigade of the Ukrainian Army has opened the holiday season for Russians. Some bathed in the Donets, some were burned by the May sun.” So far, however, there are no official or independent figures on the exact number of victims.
Russia has been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine for more than two and a half months. The aim is at least the complete conquest of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. The United Nations has already registered around 3,500 civilian deaths, but like the Ukrainian leadership assumes the number of victims to be far higher.
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