Friday, March 25, 2022

Harsh if true



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:
[W]hile there was some evidence to corroborate the claim that the commander had been run over, it was less clear whether, as the western officials claimed, the colonel had died. On Friday night, they partially retracted the claim in the light of conflicting evidence on social media. They said they were seeking to clarify whether he was alive or dead – and said that the key point was that he was a victim of a mutiny, not whether he had been killed or not.

The original report of the mutiny was made on Wednesday on Facebook by a Ukrainian journalist, Roman Tsymbaliuk, who said that it occurred after the unit, which had been fighting in Makariv, west of Kyiv, had lost “about 50% of their personnel”.

“After choosing a convenient moment, during the fight, he ran over the commander standing next to him, injuring both his legs,” the journalist wrote. The colonel was then moved to a hospital in Belarus.

A separate film released by the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, showed the commander, Yuri Medvedev, being transported by medical troops, in which he is clearly alive.

[...]

Western officials believe that about one-sixth or maybe one-fifth of Russia’s original invasion force, which comprised an estimated 20 battalion tactical groups, is “no longer combat-effective” – a high degree of losses, reflecting the botched invasion and fierce Ukrainian fightback.

Seven Russian generals have been killed in the fighting, which has also led to several thousand Ukrainian military fatalities and civilian casualties.

  Guardian

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