The scenes are chaotic: Russian tanks veering wildly before exploding or driving straight into minefields, men running in every direction, some on fire, the bodies of soldiers caught in tank tracks.
Russian military bloggers are calling it a fiasco, and worse.
These scenes have been recorded by Ukrainian military drones over the past two weeks around the town of Vuhledar in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, where successive Russian assaults have failed.
The Vuhledar debacle suggests chronic failures in the command and tactics of the Russians as they gear up for a spring offensive. If replicated elsewhere on the long military front in Donetsk and Luhansk, such failings could jeopardize the Kremlin’s plans to seize more territory.
About 20 videos geolocated by CNN show basic tactical blunders in an area that’s open and flat, where Ukrainian spotters on higher ground can direct artillery strikes and where minefields are worsening Russian casualties.
One video shows a tank running into a minefield and exploding, followed almost obliviously by an infantry fighting vehicle that suffers the same fate. Others show Ukrainian drones dropping small explosive charges on static tanks in open country – and a graveyard of abandoned armor.
At least two dozen Russian tanks and infantry vehicles have been disabled or destroyed in a matter of days, according to the videos, which were released by the Ukrainian military and analyzed by CNN and military experts. Satellite images show intensive patterns of impacts along tree lines where Russian tanks tried to advance.
The Russian Defense Ministry has insisted the assault on Vuhledar, where the 155th Marine Brigade is prominently involved, is going according to plan. In remarks recorded for a Sunday television show, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the “marine infantry is working as it should. Right now. Fighting heroically.”
But the leader of the self-declared, Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, acknowledged Friday that the area was “hot” and said, “the enemy continues to transfer reserves in large quantities, and this slowed down the liberation of this settlement.”
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