Russian forces suffer big losses in human wave attacks on Kharkiv

By Roy Landersen
June 3, 2024
Maksym Timchenko, 7, raises his hand for his teacher Liudmyla Demchenko to call on him at class inside subway station in Kharkiv, under constant bombardment. Schools and other facilities have been forced underground as city’s residents defy Moscow’s assault.
Claire Harbage/NPRMaksym Timchenko, 7, raises his hand for his teacher Liudmyla Demchenko to call on him at class inside subway station in Kharkiv, under constant bombardment. Schools and other facilities have been forced underground as city’s residents defy Moscow’s assault.

Moscow’s troops are suffering heavy losses during an offensive launched May 10 in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to extend the front lines of the largest ground war in Europe since World War II and stretch outgunned and outmanned, but courageous and determined, Ukrainian defenses.

For the first two weeks of the offensive, the Russian army suffered over 1,000 casualties every day, likely a record for the entire war. Partisan groups operating behind Russian lines claimed that two of the Kremlin’s major combat units suffered losses with over two-thirds dead or severely injured. Wave upon wave of Russian soldiers are thrown into the front line barrage, leading to high casualty figures, and deepening opposition to the war among working people inside Russia.

“It’s an unbelievable meat grinder that they’re still sending their people into,” a mortar operator for the Freedom of Russia Legion, who uses his call sign “Winnie,” told Reuters. The legion and two other paramilitary units of pro-Ukrainian Russian nationals are among the reinforcements Kyiv has sent to repel the northeastern incursion.

Putin has the same contempt for the lives of Russian soldiers as he has for the Ukrainian people his forces bombard. Opposition to the war inside Russia shows that it is working people there, in and out of uniform, who are the Ukrainian people’s most important ally in their fight to defend their country’s sovereignty.

Ukrainian artillery and drones inflicted blows on poorly equipped and demoralized Russian troops attempting to take the town of Vovchansk, in the northeast. Moscow’s forces have seized 40% of the town and several nearby villages. They remain about 20 miles from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest and most heavily bombarded major city.

At the same time, Putin’s forces have made small gains with heavy losses fighting to take over the town of Chasiv Yar in the south. The hillside town is a significant hub for Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donetsk region. It has been fought over since 2014, when Putin used Russian soldiers, disguised as separatists, to seize Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Putin claims Moscow’s offensive in northeastern Ukraine is necessary to provide Russia with a buffer zone and protect civilians there from attack by Ukrainian forces. But it’s his regime’s drive to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign nation that is the source of the carnage. An independent Ukraine is no threat to the Russian people.

Kyiv strikes Crimea, Russia bases

Ukrainian long-range precision-guided missiles sank two Russian warships — a guided missile corvette and a minesweeper — in Sevastopol in Crimea May 19. At least two fighter jets were also destroyed at a nearby air base. The Kremlin withdrew most of its warships from Sevastopol in October after Ukrainian forces sunk or damaged over half the fleet.

Inside Russia an oil refinery in the southern Krasnodar region and a substation, an oil depot, and a railway station in the port city of Novorossiysk, were also hit the same week.

Moscow continues to wield its military superiority. Its artillery has ammunition stocks many times as large as those of Ukrainian forces. As well as ramping up domestic arms production since the invasion began, Moscow has received munitions from governments in North Korea, Iran and Belarus.

Taking advantage of delays in the delivery of air defense systems by Washington and its allies, Moscow has intensified its airstrikes on Ukrainian cities and towns. In March alone, more than 400 Russian missiles, over 600 drones and more than 3,000 guided glide bombs were fired. Glide bombs are released from warplanes in Russian airspace far from their targets and out of the reach of Ukrainian air defenses.

Moscow’s forces also specialize in what are called two-tap strikes. A bomb is exploded in an urban area and then, when emergency services and worker-volunteers come to rescue survivors, a second deadly projectile is unleashed on the same target.

All large thermal and hydroelectric plants in Ukraine were targeted between March 22 and May 8, causing extensive damage. As a result, the Ukrainian government has been forced to reintroduce nationwide blackouts for industrial and residential use.

In Ukraine working people volunteer to fight at the front, while Russian soldiers are seeking ways to get out of the line of fire.

A Russian officer was recorded berating his troops, who were trying to escape a barrage, the Kyiv Post reported May 14. “They are mutinying,” he screams over the radio. He threatens them with being targeted by a unit positioned behind them with orders to kill any retreating soldiers. He shouts, “You will die if you stop right now. I’ll direct the artillery on you personally!”

Near the village of Rabotyne in the south, Eduard Maranov, 21, a Russian private from Kamykia, found a way out. In the face of Ukrainian drone attacks, he and his mates retreated, then wandered into Ukrainian positions. He told the Kyiv Post that the Russian army doesn’t often supply food to troops in forward positions, but Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine were given regular meals by authorities there.