While Vladimir Putin claims that Ukraine has lost thousands of men and hundreds of pieces of equipment, and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu is on a visit to North Korea, the Russian army is losing dominant heights and villages in two directions at once: Bakhmut (Klishchiivka and Andriivka villages) and Zaporizhzhya (Staromayorske village).
About the loss of control over Staromayorske reported Z-publics. “The enemy methodically rolled out Staromayorske for several days, <…> gradually displaced us, simultaneously creating a flank threat to positions on Urozhayne”, – writes the commander of the battalion Vostok Aleksandr Khodakovsky. About the loss of control over the village writes and the channel Rybar: “Detachments of marines of the Ukrainian Navy made an attempt to break through to Urozhayne, but without success. The enemy’s plan in this case is obvious: the AFU intends to take the army in pincers”.
According to Vladimir Romanov’s Z-channel, after the loss of Staromayorske, the army is likely to withdraw from the village of Urozhayne: “The commanders do not have enough competence to solve this problem. Now the issue is at the stage of shifting the blame on each other”.
Earlier, former “DNR Defense Minister” Igor Strelkov reported that the loss of Staromayorske could lead to a breakthrough to the rear of the defending group. The AFU planned to cut the “land road” to Crimea in this direction.
Shoigu removed General Ivan Popov from this direction because of “alarmism” and “misinformation”: he drew up a report asking him to strengthen counter-battery warfare, to rotate and replenish. Romanov reported that last fall Popov had prepared a similar report on the critical state of the front in Kharkiv region. For that report Popov was removed from the direction, and the AFU in a short period of time recaptured almost the entire region (400 square kilometers) and captured the group’s headquarters in the city of Izium. After the Kharkiv defeat, Putin signed a decree on mobilization in October 2022.
