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Throughout Ukraine’s counteroffensive this fall, its troops surrounded town of Lyman.
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Lyman is a crucial hub in jap Ukraine, and a bigger Russian drive was trapped there.
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Russian troops in Lyman and those that retreated took heavy losses, together with an elite GRU unit.
As September rolled round, most everybody anticipated the Ukrainian navy to launch a significant assault in opposition to Russian forces in Kherson within the south.
For weeks, Ukrainian forces had been utilizing US-supplied M142 Excessive Mobility Artillery Rocket Programs to launch long-range precision strikes on Russian provide traces and communications networks in southeastern Ukraine.
Nonetheless, the Ukrainians stunned the Russians and the world by launching a fast-paced counteroffensive within the east round Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest metropolis. In just some days, Ukrainian forces took again a whole bunch of sq. miles of territory and scores of villages.
The truth that the Russian excessive command had determined to mass appreciable forces within the south to defend Kherson, which Moscow ended up retreating from in November, aided Kyiv’s counteroffensive, which sliced by Russian traces like a scorching knife by butter and repeatedly flanked massive Russian formations — together with at a significant logistical hub in far-eastern Ukraine.
The battle for Lyman
The city of Lyman shortly turned the focal point as Ukrainian forces partially surrounded it within the closing days of September, trapping a big Russian garrison in there.
Lyman is a key logistical node commanding an necessary highway over the Seversky Donets River in Ukraine’s Donetsk area. Its loss compounded Russian setbacks within the closing weeks of summer season and stoked additional anger amongst pro-war commentators in Russia.
British navy intelligence assessed after the battle that the Russian drive defending Lyman was a hodgepodge of mobilized reservists and depleted models {of professional} troops.
The Ukrainians supplied the appreciable variety of Russian troops trapped in Lyman a possibility to give up. The Russians opted to retreat beneath cowl of darkness however suffered heavy casualties from Ukrainian ambushes and long-range strikes.
After the battle, the BBC’s Russian service reported, the reconnaissance firm of the GRU’s third Guards Spetsnaz Brigade was caught within the struggle and suffered heavy casualties, dropping as many as 9 members, probably the most for it in a single battle to date within the warfare.
Based mostly by itself analysis and that of Russian media and volunteers, the BBC estimated 56 members of the brigade had been killed since Moscow launched its invasion in February. Whereas the brigade’s dimension is classed, the BBC stated 75% of the unit’s troops might have been killed or wounded to date, based mostly on estimates of attrition for Russian models in Ukraine.
The BBC additionally based mostly its report in regards to the toll in Lyman on interviews with relations and a assessment of posts on the VKontakte social community from September 30 and October 1.
One VK publish stated the brigade had been “laid to waste” and “thrown into the meat grinder,” based on a translation by The Moscow Instances.
Exhausting to switch
The GRU is Russia’s military-intelligence company. It conducts a number of completely different mission units, together with human intelligence, cyberespionage, sabotage, and assassinations. Its cadre of Spetsnaz commandos is among the many greatest within the Russian navy.
Will probably be seemingly arduous to switch these losses. Competent particular operators require years of fundamental and superior navy coaching, in addition to coaching tailor-made to their mission units. By the point they be part of an operational unit, their militaries have invested thousands and thousands of {dollars} to organize them.
Considered one of the US special-operations group’s core ideas is: “Particular operations forces can’t be mass-produced.” And the coaching pipeline for US operators can final years.
It could possibly take six months from boot camp to choice and evaluation for troopers to affix the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment, the world’s premier light-infantry special-operations unit. It could possibly take greater than a yr and a half to turn out to be a Navy SEAL and greater than two years to turn out to be an Air Drive pararescueman.
After years of normal and superior navy coaching, tier-one US special-operations models, such because the Army’s Delta Drive, require an extra choice and a complicated operator-training course that may take greater than six months and weeds out even skilled troops.
The Russian navy as a complete is taking a battering in Ukraine, although casualty estimates differ broadly. Gen. Mark Milley, the US navy’s prime normal, stated in early November that Russia had seemingly suffered losses of “nicely over 100,000” troops killed and wounded.
Moscow launched what it referred to as a “particular navy operation” with solely a part of its navy and has since introduced a “partial mobilization” to name up extra troops. Its losses have been so heavy that special-operations troops have typically been used as common soldiers in an try to plug holes in Russian traces.
Its planning additionally led to the misuse of elite Russian models, just like the vaunted VDV airborne forces, which had been battered in a failed effort to seize an airport close to Kyiv within the warfare’s opening days.
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a protection journalist specializing in particular operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (nationwide service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins College graduate. He’s working towards a grasp’s diploma in technique and cybersecurity at Johns Hopkins’ College of Superior Worldwide Research.
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