Ukraine war: Russia holds conscientious objectors in 'horrific conditions' in Luhansk

Created: 07/25/2022, 04:59 am

By: Helena Gries, Sandra Kathe, Tim Vincent Dicke, Nadja Austel, Vincent Büssow, Nail Akkoyun, Andreas Apetz, Lucas Maier, Sarah Neumeyer

Russia apparently recorded high losses in the Ukraine war.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense specifies the current data: the news ticker.

• Russia continues to attack Ukraine.

  Kyiv fights back in the Ukraine war.

• Weapons deliveries from the NATO area, the EU and the USA are severely affecting Russia in the Ukraine conflict.

• Editor's note:

  Some of the information comes from warring factions and cannot be directly verified independently.

+++ 10:55 p.m .:

In addition to the war losses, the Russian army is also struggling with numerous war-refusing soldiers.

More and more professional soldiers would refuse to continue to take part in the war in Ukraine.

The investigative magazine

reports on the catastrophic conditions in which the refusing Russians are being held "in custody".

The magazine relies on the statements of the family members of some soldiers.

According to The Insider

, professional soldiers were promised the option to refuse to take part in the war.

However, when they decided to leave Ukraine and wrote letters of refusal, they were arrested and taken to the town of Brianka in the Luhansk region.

Conscientious objectors would be held there in appalling conditions.

Eyewitnesses spoke of "some pits" and "torture".

speaks of a significant number of holdouts.

Soldiers who refuse to fight the war make things difficult for Russia (archive image) © Evgeniy Maloletka/DPA

According to a father, the Russian military leadership explained to him that they had nothing to do with the imprisonment of the "refusers".

The professional soldiers were held by "militant Luhanskers".

War in Ukraine: Ministry of Defense speaks of almost 40,000 Russian soldiers killed

Update from Sunday, July 24, 3:59 p.m .:

Russia continues to suffer heavy losses in Ukraine.

According to the Ukrainian General Staff, about 40,000 Russian forces have died in Ukraine since the start of the war.

However, Western experts assume that there are significantly fewer.

Russia last reported its own losses at the end of March.

At that time, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow gave the number of 1,351 dead. 

The General Staff of Ukraine also estimates that 1,722 Russian tanks and 3,942 armored vehicles were destroyed.

Ukrainian news portal

reports that Ukrainian air defenses shot down three Kalibr cruise missiles on Sunday morning (July 24).

Russian forces fired rockets from the Black Sea in the direction of Ukraine's western Khmelnytskyi region, according to the "West" task force.

The information cannot be independently verified.

List of Russian losses in the Ukraine War

• Soldiers:

  39,520

• Aircraft:

  221

• Helicopters:

  188

• Tanks:

  1722

• Armored Fighting Vehicles:

  3942

• Artillery systems:

  869

• Air defense systems:

  113

• Multiple rocket launcher systems:

  255

• Cars and other vehicles:

  2823

• Ships:

  15

• Unmanned combat drones:

  714

• As of Sunday 24 July 2022

• The information on Russia's losses in the Ukraine war comes from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

  They cannot be independently verified.

  The Kremlin itself gives very little information about its own losses.

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Ukraine war: Russia is fighting with heavy losses - conversation overheard  

+++ 9:00 p.m .:

Russia is apparently having a hard time with the losses in the Ukraine war.

In fact, the Russian forces seem to have so few troops left that they have to make three battalions into one.

At least that is how a wiretapped conversation that has now been published by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is to be interpreted.

Accordingly, a Russian soldier explains in it that several battalions are to be withdrawn from the combat area due to high losses and three battalions are to be made into one: "There are simply no more people."

+++ 5.30 p.m .:

Russia repeatedly suffers severe losses in the Ukraine war.

According to Ukrainian sources, 50 Russian soldiers have died in an attack on the headquarters of the sixth regiment in the occupied city of Lysychansk.

This was announced by Serhiy Haidai, the military governor of the Luhansk region, via Facebook.

The information cannot be independently verified.

News about the Ukraine war: According to insiders, Russia's losses are enormous

Update from Saturday, July 23, 2022, 11:35 a.m .:

In the morning report to the Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, the Russian military is said to have briefed his head of state on current casualty figures in the Ukraine war.

This emerges from a post on the Telegram channel “General SVR”, which is said to be operated by a Kremlin insider.

It speaks of 43,018 "irretrievable losses" since the beginning of the war.

The Ukraine War in Pictures - Destruction, Resistance and Hope

View photo gallery

According to information in the Telegram message, this included only official military personnel.

Killed members of private security or military companies (PMCs) are not counted.

If these are really the official casualty figures on the Russian side, they even exceed the current estimate of the Ukrainian military, which currently expects over 39,200 Russian dead.

Since the start of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, official information about allegedly small Russian losses has seldom leaked out from the Kremlin.

Losses in the Ukraine war: Five soldiers die in an attack on a nuclear power plant

+++ 9.30 p.m .:

Since March, the troops from Russia have occupied the Enerhodar nuclear power plant.

The Ukraine recently attacked the power plant with so-called “Kamikaze drones”, as the

reports.

"Kamikaze drones were used to attack a tent city and enemy equipment," the military intelligence service of Ukraine said.

The attack reportedly destroyed both anti-aircraft defenses and a Grad (hail) multiple rocket launcher.

According to Ukrainian sources, three Russians were killed and twelve others injured in the attack.

The Russian occupation administration of the Zaporizhia region said that eleven power plant employees were injured in the attack - four of them seriously.

So far, the pro-Russian statements and those of the Ukrainian side have not been able to be independently verified.

The Department of Defense released video of the attack.

It shows explosions and fleeing people on the power plant site.

The

also reported on such a video.

+++ 8:20 p.m .:

In the Donetsk region, the Russian armed forces made several attempts to advance further.

As reported by the General Staff of Ukraine, without success.

In a push toward Verkhnokamyansk and Ivano-Daryivka, Ukraine's armed forces reportedly repulsed Putin's forces.

The same happened to the Russian troops ten kilometers from the town of Bakhmut in the village of Pokrovske.

The occupiers were also repelled in the village of Vodiane.

The exact losses in the actions have not yet been announced.

The information is communications from the Ukrainian military, which have not yet been independently confirmed.

+++ 4.45 p.m .:

According to the United States, Ukraine has “eliminated more than a hundred high-value targets”, according to a senior US defense official.

Most of the targets have come under attack in the east of the country in recent weeks as Ukrainian troops have improved their aim using US-supplied artillery.

The US news

reports on this .

Ukraine is attacking "Russian command posts, ammunition depots, air defense installations, radar and communications hubs, and long-range artillery positions," the official said.

However, Washington also reckons that Russia is still firing "tens of thousands" of artillery shells a day.

Heavy casualties: video shows destruction of Russian artillery division

+++ 3.30 p.m .:

Ukrainian troops report the destruction of a Russian artillery division.

A video posted on Twitter shows an airstrike that destroyed eight Russian Msta-B howitzers, vehicles, ammunition and fortifications at an unspecified location in Ukraine, according to the military.

This is reported, among other things, by the news portal

.

However, the information cannot be independently verified.

+++ 1.30 p.m .:

As the news portal

reports, the Ukrainian military has destroyed five Russian fortresses and two ammunition depots in southern Ukraine.

Accordingly, the Ukrainian task force "South" reported that on July 21 it killed 35 Russian soldiers and destroyed a howitzer, two UAVs and 11 armored and military vehicles.

The information provided by the task force cannot be independently verified.

Russia can probably no longer push through its ambitions in Ukraine

Update from Friday, July 22, 6:45 a.m .:

According to the Canadian armed forces, Russia probably no longer has the military capabilities to assert its ambitions in Ukraine.

In a series of tweets on July 21, the Canadian Armed Forces cited significant losses in personnel and equipment as reasons for Russia's dwindling military capabilities.

This is reported by the news portal

Update from Thursday, July 21, 6:45 a.m .:

The Russian attack on Ukraine has been raging for almost five months.

The US foreign intelligence service assumes that around 15,000 people have died on the side of ruler Vladimir Putin.

The number of wounded Russian soldiers is about three times as high, said CIA director William Burns on Wednesday (July 20) at a panel discussion in the US state of Colorado.

“And the Ukrainians suffered too - probably a little less.

But, you know, significant losses,” the representative of the foreign intelligence service was quoted as saying by the

.

There is no official information from the Russian side.

The Ukrainian side's estimates are currently lower than those of the US.

The last estimate here was around 38,750 disabled soldiers on the side of Russia.

Update from Wednesday, July 20, 06:19:

Ukrainian soldiers have caused significant casualties on the Russian side, the

reports .

The Donetsk region is affected.

However, official figures from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense are not yet available.

Ukraine-News: Ukrainian military destroys Russian ammunition depots

Update from Tuesday, July 19, 6:45 a.m .:

As the news portal

reports

the Ukrainian military has destroyed two Russian ammunition depots in southern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Operational Command "South" reported on July 18 that Ukrainian forces also killed 65 Russian soldiers and destroyed a mobile communications system and 11 armored and military vehicles.

Ukraine-News: Ukrainian airstrikes in the south of the country

Update from Monday, July 18, 6:19 a.m .:

The air strikes by the Ukrainian military in southern Ukraine were successful, as the Ukrainian news portal

reports.

According to the Armed Forces' own statements, the Operational Command "South" killed 36 Russian soldiers near Blahodatne, Davydiv Brid in the Kherson region on Sunday (July 17).

In addition, two Pantsir missile systems, three strategic communications systems, a radar station, two ammunition depots, and eleven armored and military vehicles were destroyed.

On the night of Monday, July 18, around ten explosions could also be heard in Mykolaiv, Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych reported to the Kyiv Independent.

Ukraine War News: Russian Equipment Destroyed

Update from Sunday, July 17, 12 noon:

According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Russia has lost around 38,300 military personnel, 1,684 tanks and a significant amount of other military equipment in the course of its large-scale military invasion of Ukraine as of today.

Compared to Saturday (July 16), 160 more Russian forces are said to have been killed.

In addition, seven tanks and five combat vehicles could be destroyed.

The information could not be independently verified.

First report from Friday, July 15:

Cherson - The Ukraine war rages on incessantly.

The armed forces of Ukraine repeatedly inflict heavy losses on the aggressors from Russia.

In southern Ukraine, Russia is said to have lost several ammunition depots to weapon systems from the West in recent days, according to the troops behind Volodymyr Zelenskyj.

Ukraine-News: Russia has to take heavy losses in the south

The report by the Operations Command "South" on Thursday (July 14) speaks of heavy losses for the troops from Russia, including six armored vehicles, a "Gvozdika" howitzer and a field ammunition depot.

The Himar missile systems from the USA are said to have caused many losses on the side of Russia, as

writes.

The current attacks on depots behind enemy lines may indicate that the Russian occupiers are about to launch a counter-offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.

Ukraine War: Information from Russia is rare

It remains to be seen whether Russia's losses will continue to increase.

Ex-General Frederick Ben Hodges recently predicted defeat for Russia.

(lm/nak/tvd/ska/hg/na with dpa/AFP)