A crack airborne brigade armed with modern American fighting vehicles led the assaults. Unconfirmed reports say dozens of Russian soldiers were taken prisoner.
Ukrainian troops counterattacking in the northern Kharkiv sector recovered lost ground and captured Russian prisoners of war, but bitter fighting in the town of Vovchansk was still in progress, official and open-source reports said on Wednesday.
Both the Ukrainian DeepState battle tracking platform and the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) confirmed that Ukrainian forces had recaptured buildings and advanced in the battleground town less than five kilometers from the Russian border. An ISW May 22 report called the situation in the town “dynamic.”
There was close-in combat and firefights along the length of the Vovcha River that cuts through the town east and west, and terrain gains and losses were measured in dozens of meters, those independent reports said.
Russian attacks were continuing with local commanders sending small infantry teams forward to attack terrain on the front line, and launching glider bomb and artillery strikes at military and civilian targets in the Ukrainians’ rear area.
Russian air strikes injured thirteen civilians, among them a child, in attacks hitting the nearby major city Kharkiv – Ukraine’s second largest – on Wednesday morning, a statement from Ukraine’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said.
Russia, in early May, committed a reported 20,000+ men to open a new active fighting front against Ukraine in the Kharkiv sector, according to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, to slice out territory at least 40 kilometers deep into Ukraine to prevent Kyiv’s forces from shooting at targets across the border inside the Russian Federation.
The Kremlin assaults in early May grabbed two swaths of land, each some 10 kilometers wide and 5 kilometers deep, capturing eight villages. Further attacks have stalled against Ukrainian defenses built on reserve units quickly deployed to the sector, massed FPV drone strikes, and – as had been effectively absent from Kyiv’s arsenal since January – long-awaited deliveries of useful quantities of NATO-standard howitzer shells.
Ukrainian forces since Monday have launched local counterattacks in and around Vovchansk, retaking about half the town and capturing dozens of prisoners. Sources agreed the veteran 82nd Air Assault Brigade was leading the assaults, backed by special forces units from the army and border troops command. In a May 22 national video address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the crack brigade had become the keystone of defenses in the Kharkiv sector.
Video published by the 82nd on its own news feeds on Monday and Tuesday showed US-manufactured Stryker armored personnel carriers moving through Vovchansk’s streets at careful speed and using hit-and-run tactics to blast possible targets with heavy machine gun fire.
A report by Ukraine’s independent ICTV television channel said the brigade “recently” destroyed two companies of Russian troops – a force normally numbering between 200-300 men – in fighting in the town.
A formation raised in Ukraine’s far-western, massively multi-ethnic Chernivtsi region, the 82nd Brigade is accounted one of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU’s) most powerful fighting formations because of a successful fighting record dating to the first days of the war.
It is heavily armed with some of the most powerful fighting vehicles Ukraine’s Western allies have sent to the AFU, including British Challenger 2 tanks and US-made Stryker armored personnel carriers.
The Kremlin advance has been stopped and urban warfare teams from the 82nd are moving to clear the town of Russian infantry, the TV report said, in interviews with unit soldiers. A soldier identified as Ivan told ICTV: “We have succeeded in throwing them (Russian forces) back a bit.”
Ukraine-run chat groups and information platforms tracking Russian service personnel dead and captured have seen an uptick in reports of soldiers captured in the Kharkiv region since mid-May, with most of the alleged new POWs becoming Ukrainian captives in Vovchansk.
A survey of one of the oldest and most-read tracking groups, called I Will Wait (or its Russian-language version Дождусь тебя) since May 15 has seen a near-tripling of reported captures of Russian troops by Ukrainian forces.
A Kyiv Post review of the OSINT data showed that close to two-thirds of captures reported from May 15-23 came from battles in the Kharkiv sector, almost all in Vovchansk.
Individuals purportedly captured numbered at least 28 men. Most, but not all, soldiers were identified by name, rank, unit, and service number. It was not possible to determine how many Russians – if any – had been captured by the 82nd Brigade, which is one of at least four major Ukrainian formations known to be fighting in the Kharkiv sector.
Units of assignment of the captured Russian soldiers, when stated, were consistent with combat formations known to be fielded by Moscow in the Kharkiv attacks, among them 9th Motor Rifle Regiment, 11th Tank Regiment, 128th Motor Rifle Regiment, 144th Motor Rifle Division, 228th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, and 237th Tank Regiment. Losses seemed to be heaviest in the tank regiments, Kyiv Post researchers found.
One Russian soldier was identified as Moscow resident Sergei Mamaev, a rifleman in the 9th Motor Rifle Regiment. According to his account, he was ordered to advance towards the Kharkiv region village Liptsy and dig in, but he and his unit came under artillery and mortar fire aimed at the armored vehicles they were riding in. Ukrainian FPV drones came next and hunted down individual soldiers trying to hide. Ukrainian infantry mopped up the battlefield the next day and took survivors prisoner, he said.
Mamayev and other soldiers in videos stated they were frustrated with the Russian national leadership’s strategy of throwing poorly-trained troops into the teeth of prepared Russian defenses, that unit casualties commonly exceed 50 percent in a single attack, and that survivors if captured receive good treatment from Ukrainian forces.
Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas and is a Yalie. He has worked in journalism in the former Soviet space for more than twenty years, and from 2015-2019 he led patrols in the Mariupol sector for the OSCE monitoring mission in Donbass. He has filed field reports from five wars and enjoys reporting on nature, wildlife and the outdoors. You can read his blog about the Russo-Ukraine war on Facebook, or on Substack at https://stefankorshak.substack.com, or on Medium at https://medium.com/@Stefan.Korshak
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/33136
“The Kremlin advance has been stopped and urban warfare teams from the 82nd are moving to clear the town of Russian infantry, the TV report said, in interviews with unit soldiers.”
It’s amazing what you can do with a few weapons at your disposal. I have no doubts the orcs will be pushed back across the border and back to their shithole once a steady supply of weapons reaches the front line.
Right, Foccusser! I don’t want to say that US’ ammunition deliveries arrived right on time, that wouldn’t be true (evidently, it was several weeks too late), but at least they prevented the worst now, a collapse of that very critical part of defence. So, some gratitude towards Washington is in order. But on the other hand, let’s not forget that the same government is still only “considering” to deliver two Patriot batteries from its huge arsenal. This should be a very easy decision, not take days and weeks. What the hell are they doing and thinking in the White House that they can’t get such simple stuff done? 🤯
Ukraine wouldn’t be in this position at all if it wasn’t for the deliberate delays to aid. Bakhmut would still be under Ukrainian control, so would Avdiivka. I have a feeling that the US would let russia take the rest of Donbas, if Putler stopped the war.
Yeah, Foccusser, with the frequent statements by White House sources that there should be a negotiated peace, apparently with territorial concessions by Ukraine, that suspicion is only reasonable. Sure, the White House doesn’t want Ukraine to lose, but they evidently don’t support a full victory, neither. And any legalization of the illegal occupation would be a win for Putler. This shouldn’t be allowed to happen, this new precedent would be way too dangerous for global security! 😠
Biden’s New Orc Times article May 2022:
“My principle throughout this crisis has been “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” I will not pressure the Ukrainian government — in private or public — to make any territorial concessions. It would be wrong and contrary to well-settled principles to do so.”
When you think about it, it’s pretty sly. Because it implies that Ukraine would want to sit down with genocidal vermin, having already been conned three times.
The only sensible thing he could and should have said at that time and right now as well is :
“No negotiations are possible until the invaders have returned permanently to the internationally agreed borders.”
“it implies that Ukraine would want to sit down with genocidal vermin”
I hope you didn’t hurt yourself with that stretch, Sir Scradge.
I see no such implication. All he’s saying is that it’s up to Ukraine to decide what they want to do.
Scradge is correct this time. You may have forgotten or didn’t hear it from Rachel Madcow, but early on Biden DID assume speaking for Zelensky until he got his fingers burned. That “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” was Zelensky’s policy. Look it up. Use our search engine.
“Use our search engine.”
I did, and I found some nice quotes (Garry Kasparov:
I want to be clear early on that […] Trump would have been far worse. Blackmailing Zelensky, while he stood up to Russian imperialism, is the type of cartoonishly evil thing that a Hollywood executive would laugh at for being too unrealistic.
Trump’s pusillanimous behavior towards Putin suggests that he would have abandoned Ukraine as a throwaway bargaining chip in any negotiations with his mutual admirer in the Kremlin.
As I have said before, Joe Biden was the best candidate in 2020.)
And I found various *opinion* pieces (not news articles) that talk about “backdoor diplomacy” referring to a meeting with Thomas Graham, who director for Russia on the National Security Council staff under George W. Bush, but who has no role in the current administration. However, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s director of the National Security Council, said:
“The United States has not requested any official or former officials to open a back channel and is not seeking such a channel. Nor are we passing any messages through others. When we say nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, we mean it.”
But I didn’t find anything like what you’re referring to.
Plus, all that is irrelevant to the current discussion. Sir Scradge posted a quote and said it implied something. I said that I see no such implication in the quote. Whatever things you heard from Fucker Carksonov have nothing to do with what was quoted.
Looks like progress to return occupied territory which many “experts” (aka armchair generals) thought wouldn’t be possible while they were desperately trying to blame a few Republicans for holding up Ukraine aid for a few months….all while ignoring the thousands and thousands of Ukrainian deaths due to……Democrat……policies. Just more proof for you that all those gloom and doom prophesies are all bunk and bringing politics into Ukrainian foreign policy is equivalent to the divisive work of the Kremlin.
Slava Ukraini~~!!
People were trying desperately to get the aid approved, despite the holdup by a few Republicans. When Republicans demanded that border security be part of the deal, Democrats went along, negotiating a bipartisan bill that would have given the G.O.P. most of what it said it wanted. But then Republicans, following instructions from trumpkov, then killed their own bill. trumpkov wanted to keep the border as a problem, thinking it would help his election attempts. So then Democrats tried a 2-pronged approach to get Ukraine the aid – working on convincing MAGAt Mike to allow a vote, while also working on a discharge petition that would force a vote despite the opposition of the Republican leadership.
The “desperation” was in getting the aid to Ukraine, not in focusing blame. After Johnson finally allowed a vote, he was rewarded by Democrats, who helped him keep his job.
Слава Україні!
Героям слава!