‘Meat grinder strategy, 50,000 Russians dead’ – Europe

While the world looks with apprehension to the Middle East and a possible escalation with Iran, Ukraine continues to be a frightening battleground. With Vladimir Putin willing to lose the lives of thousands of soldiers in order to advance the front line with what the BBC defines as the “meat grinder strategy”: sending waves of soldiers relentlessly to the front line to try to wear down the Ukrainian forces and expose their artillery. With the result of having so far exceeded “the threshold of 50,000 casualties”.

In the last few hours Kiev’s forces have also struck deep into Russia – to the point of damaging a Tupolev bomber factory in Tatarstan, according to the Ukrainian special services – and in Crimea, where according to local media and bloggers “about 30 Russian soldiers were killed and 80 wounded in a night attack on the Dzhankoy military airport” , which allegedly “destroyed a cache of Zircon and S-300 missiles.” In the morning, Moscow’s retaliation once again hurled itself at civilians, with a triple raid on Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine, one of the oldest in the country: Russian missiles hit residential buildings near the center, a hospital and an educational institution, causing at least 17 deaths, over 60 injured – including three children – and an unknown number of people missing under the rubble where the emergency services worked all day.

The massacre aroused the anger of Volodymyr Zelenskycommitted to insistently asking European and American allies to strengthen Ukrainian air defense: “This would not have happened if we had received enough anti-aircraft defense equipment and if the world’s determination to resist Russian terror had been sufficient”, thundered the president on social media, expressing increasingly more anger and frustration, especially in the aftermath of Western maneuvers over the skies of Israel to defend it from Iran.

To know more ANSA Agency The EU summit, ‘urgently give air defense to Kiev’ – Europe – Ansa.it Latest draft of the final document of the afternoon meeting (ANSA)

At this rate, and with the morale of the troops increasingly weakened by the “gloomy forecasts” of war, the Ukrainian front could collapse “next summer when Russia, with a greater numerical weight and the willingness to accept enormous losses, launches its planned offensive,” several senior Kiev officials told Politico. In short, Moscow has taken into account that it could lose a high number of soldiers even with the so-called “meat grinder strategy”. A strategy which, according to a count carried out by BBC Russia, by the independent media group Mediazona and volunteers – who also found the names of the fallen on recent graves in cemeteries – would have already brought the toll of Putin’s soldiers who died in Ukraine (excluding pro-Russian separatists of Donbass) above the threshold of 50,000, with an acceleration of 25% more in the second year of the invasion. “The overall toll is 8 times higher than Moscow’s official admission – underlines the British broadcaster -. And it is likely that the number is much higher”.

To know more ANSA Agency NATO, the Russians produce more ammunition than the US and EU together – Europe – Ansa.it Appathurai, ‘factories produce 24 hours a day, we have to do things differently’ (ANSA)

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed state secrecy over the “special military operation”, just as Kiev does not advertise the number of its fallen either: the last official figure dates back to February, when Zelensky spoke of 31,000 soldiers killed. This time too, Moscow has not confirmed the news reported of the thirty Russian soldiers who died in the attack on the air base in Crimea, which according to Russian bloggers from Rybar, close to the Kremlin’s army, hit and damaged the target with 12 Atacms missiles supplied to Kiev from the United States. The Russian Defense Ministry, however, denied that Ukrainian military intelligence drones had hit the Tupolev factory in Tatarstan, in eastern Russia: on the contrary, it specified that it had “destroyed a Ukrainian drone in the same area” before it could cause damage.

Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA