According to a local official, 200 Russian paratroopers were killed by Ukraine in a missile attack on their camp in the seized Luhansk area.
The Russian troops allegedly perished in a Ukrainian attack on their headquarters in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kadiivka yesterday night, according to Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of Luhansk.
Images posted by Gaidai seem to depict the ruined remnants of a hotel that Russian servicemen in Kadiivka had been using as a base.
‘The Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked battlements in seized Kadiiva, over 200 Russian paratroopers were killed,’ Gaidai stated on Twitter.
On Facebook, he said, “Ukrainian military demolished the base of the Russians they outfitted in the hotel ‘Donbass’ in the temporarily controlled Kadiivka, Luhansk area.
“200 Russian Federation military airborne soldiers annihilated.”
The claimed attack on the Russian headquarters comes as Russia’s offensive against Ukraine has almost stalled due to huge casualties; since the conflict started six months ago, an estimated 80,000 men have been killed or wounded.
While the fighting in the eastern Donbas area, which includes the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, has devolved into an attrition war, Russian troops still hold land along the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coastlines of Ukraine.
In the early hours of Friday, explosions were audible in the southern city of Mykolaiv, a crucial area of conflict as Russian troops attempt to advance farther west down the coast to shut off Ukraine from the Black Sea.
Regional governor Vitaliy Kim claimed there was no immediate explanation for the explosions and added that two adjacent towns had been bombarded.
There were no casualty reports.
The Ukrainian military said that its troops had stopped Russian attacks on the eastern Donetsk area towns of Bakhmut and Soledar and hit munitions storage facilities and hostile soldiers in the southern Kherson region.
According to pro-Moscow separatist authorities in Luhansk, Ukrainian troops launched around 10 missiles towards the village of Stakhanov in the eastern Donbas area with a U.S.-provided HIMARS multiple rocket launcher.
Reuters was unable to independently verify either side’s battlefield accounts.
On Wednesday, Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s minister of defense, said that his country was purposefully slowing down its assault “to prevent civilian losses.”
However, British intelligence officials today rejected this as “deliberate information” and said that Ukraine’s tough resistance and Russia’s poor military performance were to blame for the offensive’s stalling.
According to the UK defense ministry’s most recent intelligence assessment, “Under Shoigu’s directives, the troops fighting in Ukraine have frequently missed approved operational timeframes.”