Ukraine Says Russia Endured Deadliest Day So Far as War’s 1-Year Anniversary Approaches; Ukraine Targets Russia’s Ammunition Depots, Undermining Its Artillery Advantage; Group of UKR Special Forces Active in RU; UKR’s Armed Forces Conduct 14 Strikes On RU Air Defence Systems and Clusters of Manpower, LIVE UPDATES and MORE

By admin On Feb 8, 2023

Ukraine says Russia endured deadliest day so far as war’s 1-year anniversary approaches:

Ukraine’s military on Tuesday claimed that the last 24 hours of fighting were the deadliest yet for Russian troops, setting a chilling new record ahead of the war’s one-year anniversary.

Kyiv announced that the tally of Russian military deaths increased by 1,030 overnight— making the total number of military fatalities 133,190.

Russia has also claimed to have killed large numbers of Ukrainian troops in recent weeks, boasting a massive 6,500 Ukrainian casualties just in January.

Neither side’s account has been independently verified, and Kyiv has offered few details about the most recent battles.

The high death toll reflects reports from both sides that detail relentless fighting and escalated campaigns of close-contact trench warfare.

Ukrainian forces are preparing for a major Russian offensive in the coming weeks, likely aligning with the first anniversary of the war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signaled Moscow’s attempt to regain its initiative by amassing troops in the Luhansk province in eastern Ukraine. —>READ MORE HERE

Ukraine targets Russia’s ammunition depots, undermining its artillery advantage:

It is an almost everyday occurrence in the Russian-occupied parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Russia’s ammunition depots blow up, with large fires erupting as tons of ordnance detonate for hours. Some of these incidents cause giant blasts with a radius of hundreds of meters.

Now that Ukraine has acquired advanced Western artillery and rocket systems, it has gradually begun a campaign to take out Russia’s key military infrastructure. Over the last four weeks, nearly 20 Russian ammunition depots in Russian-occupied Donbas and Ukraine’s south, including some of the largest, have been hit or completely destroyed.

As Russia continues with its slow but steady advance in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas, Ukraine’s military is working to undermine Russia’s overwhelming artillery power and disrupt its logistics deep in occupied territories.

Seek and destroy

Devastating strikes upon Russian command posts have become increasingly frequent since mid-June when Ukraine began using the first of four M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, provided by the U.S., nearly a week before their arrival in Ukraine was publicly announced.

On June 15, a massive explosion occurred near the city of Khrustalniy (formerly Krasniy Luch) in occupied Luhansk Oblast.

Explosions continued for days. According to satellite images, the blasts created a destruction zone spanning some 500 meters around the epicenter. The site was one of Russia’s largest ammunition depots, built after Russian forces occupied the area in 2014. In the Azotniy neighborhood in the northeastern part of Donetsk where Russia established ammunition depots through the city, successful attacks have continued on an almost daily basis.

On July 2, Ukraine’s military published a video showing an enormous explosion at another large depot in the city of Popasna in Luhansk Oblast that was being used to supply Russian units near Bakhmut and to the south of the Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk. Two days later, another devastating blast destroyed a large depot in the city of Snizhne. Three more depots were also hit in Donetsk. —>READ MORE HERE

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