Russian combat unit suffers heavy losses at bridge, army further pushed back at Kharkiv

The Russian loss coincides with other setbacks further north around the city of Kharkiv. The Ukrainian army is on a counter-offensive here to end the artillery shelling of the city. The Russian army has been pushed back to the banks of the Donets River, 40 kilometers from Kharkiv. However, the Russians would almost completely control the town of Rubizjne.

The attack on the pontoon bridge took place west of Rubizjne. The Russians built the pontoon bridge to cross the Donets. However, they were surprised by a Ukrainian tank brigade that fired on the Russian combat unit with artillery. It is possible that the Russians were caught by a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone. These are frequently used by the Ukrainians to track down Russian units.

According to the British Ministry of Defense, which confirmed the Russian loss on Friday, the equipment of at least one Russian combat unit was lost in the shelling. Such a unit, a Tactical Battle Group (TBG), consists of six hundred to eight hundred soldiers armed with, among other things, tanks, artillery, armored vehicles and air defense weapons.

Burnt out tanks

Usually such a combat unit has ten tanks and forty armored vehicles. Russia has sent 99 of these TBGs to Ukraine, more than half the number of combat units at its disposal. The images show burnt-out tanks and other armored equipment on the bank of the river. The pontoon bridge has been swept away and parts of it are under the water.

In the woods near the riverbank are also blackened armored vehicles that could not escape the Ukrainian artillery fire from the 17th Tank Brigade. It is not clear how many Russian soldiers were killed. There are no bodies in the images, which have not been verified by independent sources.

“Crossing rivers in a battlefield is a very risky maneuver,” said the British Ministry, which provides daily updates on the war based on intelligence information. “It shows the pressure Russian commanders are under to make progress in their operations in eastern Ukraine.”

‘Holiday season open’

According to the Ukrainian army, the Russian soldiers remained on their side of the river after the shelling. According to the army leadership in Kyiv, they tried to hold on to their positions on the right bank.

The Ukrainians took advantage of the losses to mock the Russian army on Twitter. “Artillerymen of the 17th Tank Brigade of the Ukrainian Army have opened the holiday season for the Russians,” the army said in a tweet. “Some bathed in the Donets River and some were burned by the May sun.”

According to the Ukrainian army command, the Russians may have been on their way to the town of Lyman, more than twenty kilometers to the west. The Russian army has been trying to penetrate this area for weeks to isolate the Ukrainian military in the Donbas and cut it off from the rest of the country. The final target is the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

If the Russians take these two cities, supported by an advance from the south, they could cut the supply lines of the ten Ukrainian brigades. However, according to the Americans and the British, the Russians have still not made great progress in their offensive in the Donbas. Ukraine has about 40 to 50 thousand soldiers stationed along the line that is about 500 kilometers long.