The Ukrainian army "surrendered as a unit", Russian media: "human flesh assault" suffered heavy losses of soldiers | Ukraine | human flesh
According to the website of the Russian weekly newspaper "Arguments and Facts" on July 24th, due to the Ukrainian military's "human flesh assault" on the Russian military's strong positions, a large number of personnel were lost, and there was a situation on the battlefield where Ukrainian soldiers would rather surrender than go to battle and die. Yevgeny Balitsky, the acting chief executive of the Zaporizhzhia region appointed by the Russian side, said, "Now, we are surrendering in an organized manner. Although there has been no surrender from the company level troops, we have seen the situation of whole platoons surrendering."
According to reports, the massive loss of personnel and comprehensive conscription mobilization on the Ukrainian side are having a counterproductive effect, and the combat forces are beginning to "disintegrate" from within.
The report suggests that factors driving this situation include not only military failure, but also the large-scale recruitment of elderly people by the Ukrainian military. Military expert Alexander Ivanovsky said, "Many of them have served in the Soviet army and remember that era when all ethnic groups were truly friendly to each other."
The military expert said, "Therefore, it is difficult to make them believe that the Soviet Union is the prison of all ethnic groups. When they have enough food and clothing, they can tolerate this statement, after all, everyone can still 'well water does not invade river water'. But when they go to the front line, the daily life there will force them to recall their youth, that is, the Soviet era. The doubts of the elderly will infect young people, sowing the seeds of doubt for the latter."
The report states that according to publicly available sources, it can be concluded that the proportion of Ukrainian Soviet legacies among voluntarily surrendered Ukrainian soldiers is high. The 32nd Independent Motorized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army is quite famous, nicknamed "Grandfather Brigade", and its soldiers are mainly elderly men. The daily battle reports of the Russian army contain news of the surrender of the "grandfathers" of the brigade.
On July 24, the website of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported that the US Military Observer magazine reported that the Ukrainian army had lost about 26000 soldiers in its counter offensive in the past month and a half, and its daily average loss of personnel on all fronts could be up to 1000.
According to the report, "Western sources believe that this large-scale loss is related to Kiev's continuous dispatch of newly trained conscripts to the front line. Some have previously stated that the estimated survival time of Ukrainian soldiers on certain fronts is only 4 hours."