The destruction wrought by a Russian battalion when it tried to cross a river in northeastern Ukraine last week has emerged as one of the deadliest battles of the war, with estimates based on publicly available evidence now suggesting more than 400 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded.
And as the magnitude of what happened comes into sharper focus, the disaster looks set to burst through the Kremlin’s tightly controlled information bubble.
Perhaps most notably, the Russian battlefield failure has resonated with a stable of pro-Russian war bloggers — some of whom are embedded with troops on the front lines — who have reliably posted on the social network Telegram with claims of Russia’s success and Ukrainian cowardice. .
“The commentary from these widely read milbloggers may fuel burgeoning doubts in Russia about Russia’s prospects in this war and the prowess of Russia’s military leaders,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research body, wrote over the weekend.
On May 11, the Russian command reportedly sent about 550 troops of the 74th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 41st Combined Arms Army to cross the Donets River at Bilohorivka, in the eastern region of Luhansk, in an attempt to counter the Ukrainian forces in the near Rubizhne.
Satellite images show Ukrainian artillery destroying and destroying several Russian pontoon bridges for a close concentration of Russian troops and equipment around the river.
The Institute for the Study of War, citing analysis based on the publicly available footage, indicated that as many as 485 Russian soldiers may have been killed or wounded and more than 80 pieces of equipment destroyed.
As news of the losses at the Bilohorivka river crossing began to spread, some Russian bloggers seemed unwilling to back down in criticizing what they believed to be incompetent leadership.
“I kept quiet for a long time,” Yuri Podolyak, a war blogger with 2.1 million followers on Telegram, said in a video posted Friday, in which he said he had so far avoided criticizing the Russian military.
“The last straw that overwhelmed my patience was the events surrounding Bilohorivka, where stupidity – I emphasize, because of the stupidity of the Russian command – burned at least one tactical battalion group, possibly two.”
Mr Podolyak ridiculed the Kremlin line that the war is going “according to plan”. He told viewers in a five-minute video that the Russian military was in fact short of functional unmanned drones, night vision equipment and other equipment “catastrophically lacking at the front”.
“Yes, I understand it’s impossible for there to be no problems in a war,” he said. “But if the same problems persist for three months and nothing seems to change, then I personally and in fact millions of citizens of the Russian Federation begin to have questions for these leaders of the military operation.”
Another popular blogger, going by Starshe Eddy on Telegram, wrote that the fact that commanders exposed so much of their armed forces amounted to “not idiocy, but direct sabotage”.
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And a third, Vladlen Tatarski, posted that the Russian offensive in the east was progressing slowly, not only because of a lack of surveillance drones, but also because of “these generals” and their tactics.
“Until we have the last name of the military genius who deposited a BTG by the river and he publicly accounts for it, we have had no military reforms,” Mr. Tatarsky.
Western military analysts have also delved into the footage, saying the attempted crossing showed a stunning lack of tactical sense.
They have speculated that Russian commanders, desperate to make progress, are rushing the operation. Some also suggested that it was a reflection of disorder in the Russian ranks.
If estimates that hundreds of soldiers were killed or injured are correct, it would be one of the deadliest known battles of the war.
More than 500 sailors were on board the Russian flagship Moskva on the Black Sea when it was hit by a Ukrainian missile in April. The Kremlin first insisted that all the sailors be rescued and later said that one had been killed. But even as the families of missing sailors publicly demanded answers, the Kremlin has largely kept official silence about the crew’s fate, as part of a larger campaign to suppress bad news.