In today's summary:
- The Armed Forces of Ukraine are successfully advancing in the Berdyansk and Melitopol directions;
- The key heights near Kleshcheevka have been taken by the Ukrainian military, the village is moving into the "grey zone";
- The Russian conscripts are tired and need rotation, but there is no one to replace them;
- President Zelensky: counteroffensive had to be delayed due to delays in the supply of Western equipment;
- Lvov was subjected to a massive rocket attack, killing five civilians;
- "Important stories" estimated the military losses of the Russian Federation for 2022 at 18 thousand people killed;
- The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation entered into a dispute with a British military leader over the combat potential of Russian troops;
- The New York Times: the United States is preparing for the transfer of cluster munitions to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The situation at the front
Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Aleksey Gromov said in an interview the day before that the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to advance to a depth of up to 7.5 km in the Berdyansk and Melitopol directions . According to him, a total of 9 settlements and 160 square meters have been liberated since the beginning of the offensive. km of territory.
One of the prominent figures of the pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass since 2014, and now the deputy commander of the National Guard of the "DNR" Alexander Khodakovsky writes that the Armed Forces of Ukraine actively used aviation a day earlier, allegedly due to the unsuccessful actions of the ground units. Nevertheless, for some reason, "in certain areas" the Ukrainian military was able to "take a number of positions." All this cost the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to Khodakovsky, serious losses.
"Voenkor" of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Alexander Sladkov continues to write about the situation in the area of \u200b\u200bthe settlement Kleshcheevka , which the day before he hastened to declare abandoned by Russian troops:
Kleshcheevka is behind us. The Russian infantry entrenched themselves, using the ruins as shelters. The enemy, 400-500 meters from our positions, rotates on foot and in armored vehicles. Our artillery is firing. The important stronghold "Ostrov" is also ours, according to my source.
The Ukrainian resource DeepState, based on geolocated videos, believes that the Russians actually lost a strong point at a height of 215.7. It was also announced that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had taken height 233.3. Recall that on the eve of the “commander” Alexander Yaremchuk, close to PMC Wagner, wrote about the importance of these heights for the entire southern flank of the Bakhmut direction .
Twitter analyst @Danspiun reported , citing his own source in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, that after the Ukrainians occupied the heights, Russian forces withdrew from Kleshcheevka to the outskirts, and thus the village ended up in the “gray zone”.
Meanwhile, the Russian Armed Forces are conducting their own offensive operations in the Kremennaya area. The Veteran's Notes Z-channel publishes a video (carefully, shocking footage) of the Ukrainian position taken, and a member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine complains on Twitter about Russian drones in this direction: “Enemy drones are just above us 24/7, adjusting mortars, artillery, not raise your heads, dig in well.
Z-propagandist Anastasia Kashevarova raises the problem of the lack of rotations on the Zaporozhye front . She complains that the mobilized have been on the front line literally since the beginning of October last year, and at the same time, none of them was on vacation, despite Putin's order. At the same time, there are not enough personnel for rotation. “Nine months of sitting in the trenches under shelling – the boys are already whistling with a flask,” the propagandist notes. She calls for a "political solution" of the issue, that is, for a new wave of mobilization.
In an interview with CNN, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the counter-offensive was supposed to start earlier, but had to be delayed due to delays in deliveries of Western military equipment. According to Zelensky, the scale of the territories that were planned to be liberated, as well as the complexity of this process, depended on the start of the operation.
Mutual shelling and sabotage
On the night of July 6, 10 cruise missiles were fired across the territory of Ukraine, of which 7 were intercepted, the Command of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports . Several groups of Caliber cruise missiles were recorded – at first they followed in a northerly direction, using the terrain and the channel of the Dnieper , but then they abruptly changed course and flew west.
Missiles that failed to shoot down hit Lvov . One of them hit an apartment building, destroying the fourth and third floors in two entrances. At the time of writing the report, five dead are known , mourning has been declared in the city. 34 people were injured , 30 buildings and 50 cars were damaged.
According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the strike was carried out "on points of temporary deployment of personnel of the armed forces of Ukraine and foreign mercenaries, as well as on places of storage of foreign-made armored vehicles."
The state agency RIA Novosti writes , citing a source in the Ministry of Defense, that the target of the attack was allegedly Western equipment, including British Challenger tanks, as well as the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (up to 800 people) and "foreign mercenaries" who were on the territory of the military academy.
The Rybar Telegram channel linked to the Russian Defense Ministry confirms that the attack on the occupied Makiivka in the Donetsk region , carried out by the Armed Forces of Ukraine two days ago, really hit an ammunition depot located on the territory of an unfinished and deserted residential area. He also claims that some of the HIMARS MLRS missiles were allegedly intercepted by Russian air defense forces, while others fell "near city hospitals."
This can be doubted, since, judging by the previous data, it was about two hits – in fact, in the ammunition depot, as well as in the oil depot. Residential buildings and the hospital, however, received damage from the explosion of Russian MLRS missiles stored in this warehouse (located just 350 meters from the hospital).
A blow was struck on the administration of the occupied Volnovakha in the Donetsk region . As the “military correspondents” write , after the “arrivals” of several missiles, the building will not be restored.
A massive drone raid was carried out on Belgorod . Russian sources report on the work of air defense and the destruction of all air targets.
Losses
The Important Stories publication estimated Russia's losses in the war in 2022 at the level of at least 18,000 killed. This follows from the official statistics of Rosstat, according to which only one category of deaths has increased over the year – “from external causes”, and it is among men, while among women this figure is declining. It is in it that those who died in the war should fall.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation publishes a video of the destruction of the German self-propelled howitzer PzH 2000 by the Lancet kamikaze drone.
Meanwhile, the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to hunt for Russian artillery. Fresh videos show the defeat of the D-30 howitzer , the Msta-S self-propelled artillery mount, as well as the Grad multiple launch rocket system in the 2B26 modification (on the Kamaz-5350 chassis instead of the usual Ural).
The Warrior DV Telegram channel posted a video of the defeat of the French AMX-10RC reconnaissance and fire wheeled cannon vehicle. It is alleged that the video was filmed in the Vremevsky direction . As the Ukraine Weapons Tracker project points out , the footage was taken during the events of about a month ago, which means that the Z-channels continue to use old, but previously unpublished footage, to create the appearance of heavy losses of Ukrainian Armed Forces equipment during the counteroffensive.
A video has surfaced of what is claimed to be the first Swedish CV-90 infantry fighting vehicle destroyed. The Z-channel, which published it, first mistook it for the Polish Wolverine, but attentive readers corrected its authors. On the other hand, if you look closely at the video, the BMP just left. It is not clear what the Russians got into anyway.
In the Zaporozhye direction, an anti-tank guided missile destroyed an armored personnel carrier YPR-765 delivered from the Netherlands, which acted as a "taxi for infantry". In the same place, the more modern M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle justified the role of the "tank killer" inherent in the design, striking from the TOW anti-tank missile system. Interestingly, the moment of impact was filmed on the screen of a thermal imaging sight, which gives NATO equipment an advantage over many Soviet and Russian models.
There was an exchange of 45 prisoners for 45. From the Ukrainian side, they managed to return two officers, 41 privates, a sergeant, as well as a civilian worker of Azovstal. Among those who returned from captivity are the defenders of Mariupol , as well as the military from the Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kharkov directions . In addition, two illegally deported children were returned , whose mother, a military medic, was released from captivity in October 2022. The Ministry of Defense does not report who returned to Russia, only adding that all arrivals will receive medical and psychological assistance, after which they will be sent to the medical institutions of the department.
Armaments and military equipment
Bloomberg has released material on the current balance of power in Ukraine. According to him, the gap between the military power of the Russian and Ukrainian armies is shrinking, and in terms of the number of tanks, Ukraine even surpasses Russia (1,500 units against 1,400). The calculation method included data on arms deliveries to Ukraine by the Ukraine Support Tracker project of the Kiel University of World Economy in Germany, and the losses were calculated on the basis of the Oryx project, which keeps records of them using photo and video materials.
For our part, we note that the Bloomberg material does not take into account the current production and removal of equipment from storage both in Russia and Ukraine, the repair and restoration of damaged (but not destroyed) equipment by both parties, and also the fact that not all seized equipment is suitable for further use.
At the same time, the agency's assessments largely echo the opinion of Anthony Radakin, Chief of the Defense Staff of the British Armed Forces. He believes that the Russian army spent about 10 million shells, lost 2,500 tanks in Ukraine and, along with them, more than half of its combat potential.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation acted in an irregular genre of refutation, saying that Radakin's words "amaze with the scale of lies." The answer is executed in the classic incriminating style of Soviet propaganda, and as a whole can be reduced to the phrase “look at yourself!”. In fact, only the first paragraph speaks of Russian combat effectiveness, after which passages follow that Western weapons are no good: Storm Shadow cruise missiles allegedly hit civilian infrastructure or fall flat, “scaring the steppe jerboas”, and in general it is “scrap metal ' and 'rubbish'.
At the same time, the ex-head of Roskosmos, and now the self-proclaimed leader of the Tsarskie Wolves group of military advisers, Dmitry Rogozin , spoke about the evacuation of the wreckage of the Storm Shadow rocket. He promises that specialists from Russian enterprises will "decipher the algorithms of the control system of this dangerous missile weapon and share them with air defense experts" in order to "pacify the British-French storm."
Finland has presented the 17th military aid package for Ukraine in the amount of 105 million euros. The package includes anti-aircraft guns and ammunition, the exact same information about its contents is traditionally not reported for security reasons.
In the above-mentioned interview with Alexei Gromov, Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, an estimate was made of the production of missiles by the Russian military-industrial complex – about 100 units of all types per month, including up to 10 missiles for Iskander ground-based missile systems, up to 30 Kalibr sea-based missiles. and up to 60 air-launched cruise missiles.
In addition, Gromov announced the expectation of deliveries of Turkish T-155 Firtina self-propelled artillery mounts. Earlier, in addition to drones and armored vehicles, the Armed Forces of Ukraine also received a Roketsan MCL multiple launch rocket system from Turkey, capable of launching TRLG-230 guided missiles, so the delivery of self-propelled guns does not look like something incredible.
Deputy Minister of Defense of Great Britain James Hippie said that basic training of Ukrainian pilots will begin in August.
The New York Times writes with reference to a representative of the US administration about the imminent transfer of cluster munitions to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Kyiv has been asking for them for a long time, because they allow you to effectively hit enemy manpower in the trenches. These munitions are rockets, bombs and artillery shells that explode in the air on approach and shower the territory on which the enemy is entrenched with a hail of small "bombs" – explosive submunitions.
This decision is opposed by human rights organizations, in particular Human Rights Watch, which consistently opposes the use of cluster munitions, as unexploded submunitions pose a long-term threat to civilians. In a new report, the organization has documented at least 8 civilian deaths and at least 15 injuries as a result of UAF shelling of Russian positions in the city of Izyum using cluster munitions during the 6 months of occupation of the city. The same report states that the civilian casualties of Russian cluster attacks alone, documented by human rights activists, number in the hundreds – for example, at least 58 civilians were killed by a Tochka-U missile with a cluster warhead on the Kramatorsk railway station in April last year, and how at least 115 were injured.
About the main events of the war on July 5 – in the previous report: “The Armed Forces of Ukraine are attacking Kleshcheevka, an ammunition depot has been destroyed in Makeevka, the Russians are using unique wooden armor. What's going on at the front .