Russian MoD: Kiev loses over 700 troops in last 24 hours
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Russian troops thwarted nine Ukrainian military attacks in the Donetsk direction, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
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Ukrainian soldiers ride an APC on the frontline near Bakhmut, the site of fierce battles with the Russian troops in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Monday, June 5, 2023. (AP)
The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Saturday that Ukraine has maintained its futile attempts to advance in the South Donetsk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, South Donetsk, and Krasnyi Lyman directions, resulting in the loss of nearly 700 Ukrainian troops in the last 24 hours.
According to the ministry, Russian soldiers withstood nine strikes by Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk direction in the towns of Druzhba, Sieverne, Marinka, and Pervomaiske.
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The MoD detailed that the "total losses of the Ukrainian troops [in the Donetsk direction] amounted to up to 500 people in killed and wounded, three tanks, six infantry fighting vehicles, four armored fighting vehicles, two vehicles, and two US self-propelled howitzers M109 Paladin, as well as a D-30 howitzer."
Over the last 24 hours, Russian troops drove out over 170 Ukrainian troops and wiped out one CAESAR self-propelled howitzer, one US-made M777 howitzer, two Msta-B howitzers, two D-20 gun-howitzers, and one Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer, according to the ministry.
The MoD added that Russian troops used air strikes and artillery fire to defeat over 60 Ukrainian soldiers and destroy three armored vehicles and two D-30 howitzers in the Krasnyi Lyman direction.
Early in the month, an informed official told famed journalist Seymour Hersh that "it would take [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky's military 117 years" to reassert Kiev's power over the lands which Russia now controls; which is approximately a surface area of 40,000 square miles.
Hersh urged US President Joe Biden to finally acknowledge, publicly, that “the estimated more than $150 billion that his administration has put up [to arming Ukraine] thus far turned out to be a very bad investment,” before adding that the “looming disaster in Ukraine… should be a wake-up call” for lawmakers in Washington who continue to seek to offer Kiev billions of dollars “in the hope of a miracle that will not arrive.”
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