Ukrainian marines

Introduction – July 20, 2024

You might have thought that the war in Ukraine was over given the limited media coverage it has received. However, the fighting continues, only with far less media coverage. That’s because Russia has thoroughly trounced the West’s proxies in the Ukrainian Army, just as it did in Syria against the Western backed anti-Assad forces.

This lack of media coverage for the conflicts in both Ukraine and Syria is no coincidence. It is an indication of how the Western mainstream media now works hand-in-glove with the Western military and intelligence apparatus.

While the west pumped billions in military aid to Ukraine and Syria, the western mainstream media sought to portray the anti-Assad forces in Syria as resisting tyranny, just as it cast Ukraine’s forces in a similar role.

The media’s portrayal of both conflicts was a complete misrepresentation.

Beyond the Western media spotlight, Ukrainian casualties continue to mount. In May Russia claimed that Ukraine had lost 111,000 men since the start of 2024.

That figure is a conservative estimate and the real figure could be much higher, although you might not realise that if you relied on the western media. Ed.

Ukraine loses more than 1,000 men in battle for single village

Joe Barnes – The Telegraph July 20, 2024

More than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers are feared to have been killed during a symbolic battle for a single village on the left bank of the Dnipro River.

The perilous months-long fight to establish a bridgehead in the village of Krynky, a southern Kherson fishing village, has been described as a suicide mission for soldiers, in an operation seen by commanders as crucial as for pinning down Russian forces in the area.

An investigation by Slidstvo, the Kyiv-based news website, found that at least 262 soldiers had died and 778 are still missing after nine months of struggling to maintain a foothold in the settlement.

Ukrainian marines were sent on a daring raid across the Dnipro, the river that bisects the country, in late October last year, in an attempt to establish a bridgehead in Russian-held territory.

The cross-river incursion was made possible after Russian forces were forced to retreat from the city of Kherson in November 2022. Ukrainian officials insisted the mission could open a new front in the war but observers and analysts cast doubt.

Marines crossed to the left bank on small dinghies with limited supplies, forced to fight on foot with the only long-range support coming from artillery and rocket launchers on the opposite side of the river.

Despite the initial successes in seizing Krynky and three other tiny riverside settlements, Ukraine’s forces slowly lost their grip on the area, unable to make any significant headway into the Russian-controlled area of the Kherson region.

The longer the Ukrainian operation went on, the more Russian reinforcements were brought in to end it.

Moscow grew its ranks from some 64,000 last autumn to 120,000 by this month, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Finally, Russian forces have appeared to overwhelm the Ukrainian marines in the area.

Ukrainian military officials have acknowledged their positions in Krynky had been “completely destroyed”, but denied wider reports the country’s forces have been withdrawn from the area.

The cross-river raid was widely seen as a desperate effort by Ukrainian politicians to demonstrate to Kyiv’s Western backers that its forces could make progress at the backend of the failed counter-offensive in the summer of 2023.

Soldiers taking part in the incursion, which requires a 30 to 60-minute boat journey through open water under the fire of Russian drones, have previously described it as being “tossed like a piece of meat to the wolves”.

And if they aren’t killed before reaching the riverbank the conditions only worsened for the Ukrainian marines.

“There were Russians to the right and left of us, and Russians in front of us. Behind us, there was water. There was nowhere to fall back to.” Vasyl, a soldier from Ukraine’s 37th marine brigade, told Slidstvo.

Ukraine’s Krynky commander sacked

He spent 72 days in Krynky between Dec 2 2023 and Valentine’s Day this year.

“If we had a wounded soldier, we immediately reported it so that a boat could come at night. Many boats couldn’t come, it happened that guys were lying with their limbs severed for 10 days, and the boats couldn’t come to us,” he added.

The operation in Krynky had been commanded by General Yuriy Sodol, who was sacked last month following allegations that his tactics had “killed more Ukrainian soldiers than any Russian general”.

Ukraine rarely makes public its casualty figures, but the Slidstvo report has triggered wide-scale anger among Ukrainians and prompted allegations that commanders are reckless with the lives of their men.

Unconfirmed open-source reports claim that Ukraine had lost 58 pieces of equipment in the mission compared to Russia’s 271.

But Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military expert, argued that the operation in the tiny fishing village had helped save lives elsewhere by preventing Russian troops from fighting in other offensive missions.

“Each life that was lost there, saved dozens of other lives on other fronts,” he said.

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