Russia Sustaining Troop Losses

Russian President Vladimir Putin sits in a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Sochi, Russia. The image, via Russian state media, is dated May 23, 2022.

Sputnik/Ramil Sitdikov/Kremlin via Reuters

"In the first three months of its 'special military operation', Russia has likely suffered a similar death toll to that experienced by the Soviet Union during its nine-year war in Afghanistan."

"[From 1979 to 1989 the Soviet Union lost 15,000 servicemen, thousands more wounded; Ukraine's military estimates Russian personnel losses of 29,200 since February24]."

British Ministry of Defence

"There were attempts to kill Putin."

"There was an assassination attempt recently by, as they call it, representatives of the Caucasus. This was not in the public domain."

"A completely failed attempt, but it really did happen about two months ago."

Major Gen. Kyryulo Budanov, Kyiv military intelligence official

Smoke rises in the city of Sievierodonetsk during heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, May 30, 2022, on the 96th day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine

 

History most certainly would have recorded a vastly altered turn of events had a purported attempt at assassination of Russia's long-serving strongman succeeded, shortly after ordering the invasion of Ukraine. An attempt that Ukraine's top intelligence official noted was foiled by Russian authorities. No details were forthcoming and whether this was in reference to Russia's North Caucasus or the South Caucasus remained a mystery.

The claim, however, was cast into doubt by Western officials. COVID isolaton protocols have remained in place so the potential for immediate access to the Russian president would be beyond difficult, for any reason. "[Were] anyone to attempt to do something like that it would be a hugely complex operation", a Russian official speaking anonymously, stated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that close to a hundred soldiers could die every day in the battle over Ukraine's industrial heartland in southern Ukraine where on the battlefields, Moscow's forces continue to sustain heavy losses, even as British intelligence claims that Russia lost as many men in the first three months of the Ukraine campaign as did the Soviet Union in its quagmire of a campaign, spending nine years in Afghanistan.

In the current campaign, the 'special military operation' that Vladimir Putin states is meant to cleanse Ukraine of the 'Nazi' element governing the country, Moscow is focused on encircling Ukrainian forces to succeed in its intention to fully occupy the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces making up the Donbas where separatist ethnic Russian forces aligned with Moscow claim the province as a separate enclave, completely autonomous.

Moscow, in a claim of delicious irony, accuses Ukrainian nationals of carrying out "terror attacks" on pro-Russian officials in occupied regions of southern Ukraine.Ukraine's worst military loss from a single attack of the war took place with 87 people killed as Russian forces struck a military barracks housing troops at a training base in the north in a May 27 strike in the town of Desna.

Russian troops now aspire to capture Sievierodonetsk which lies in the easternmost part of a pocket held by Ukraine in the Donbas, one of the last areas of Luhansk still eluding Russia's grasp. Russia, said Luhansk governor Serhiy Gaidal, was "wiping Sevierodonetsk from the face of the earth", attempting to advance from three directions to overrun the city, and cut off a highway south of Sievierodonetsk -- with a prewar population of some 100,000 -- may become another Mariupol.

A photograph shows an explosion in the city of Sievierodonetsk during heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, May 30, 2022.