The mayor of a city in Ukraine said that the efforts of Ukrainian soldiers are causing difficulties for Russian forces ahead of a future counterattack.
Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of Melitopol, took to Telegram Monday morning to say that more than 100 Russian soldiers had been killed in the recent attacks using “high-resolution HIMARS”. [High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems]. “
He shared several videos alongside his message that appeared to show rockets being fired. This comes at a time when the war between Ukraine and Russia is approaching the threshold of the six months that followed the decision of the Russian President Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade the country.
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“Today, high-precision HIMARS missiles were fired at temporary deployment points of the occupation forces in industrial sites in various neighborhoods of Melitopol,” he said in the Telegram Post. The Google).
Talking to NEWSWEEKOne of the targeted Russian bases, Fedorov said, was an old military airport on the outskirts of the city, while the other was an old factory used as a military warehouse.
He added that the Ukrainian forces were able to find out the locations of these bases through the revolutionaries in the city.
And he continued in his message on Telegram: “According to preliminary estimates, a large amount of military equipment was destroyed. More than 100 Russian soldiers, who were in temporary barracks that night, received tickets for the Kobzon concert, and their parents have already chosen the model and color of the Lada car. “
Ukrainian soldiers and officials used the phrase “Kobzon concert tickets” to be bought as a euphemism for Russians killed in the war in reference to Yusuf Kobzon, a Ukrainian-born singer but popular in Russia. He was dubbed the “Soviet Sinatra” and died in 2018, and some Ukrainians considered him a traitor.
The Ukrainian online publication Pravda reported that the mention of the car refers to an interview in which grieving parents said that they had bought a Lada car with financial compensation for the death of their son, who was killed in Ukraine.
Newsweek has contacted the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the Russian Foreign Ministry. Moscow has said on several occasions that it destroyed the HIMARS systems, but its claims have not been verified and have been rejected by some Ukrainian and Western officials.
Fedorov added that this attack would be vital to future counterattacks against Russian forces.
He added: “Last week, the occupiers redeployed a large part of the air defense from Melitopol to Kherson.”
“Tonight is the most effective and shows that the current enemy air defense units can no longer resist HIMARS.
“The weakening of the air defense system creates the prerequisites for a successful counterattack in the direction of Melitopol.”
He also added how integrated HIMARS proves in the fight against Russian forces.
“HIMARS helps us a lot. Since HIMARS started working in Ukraine, in Melitopol, we destroyed many Russian sites,” he said. NEWSWEEK.
Speaking of Russia’s morale, he added, “They don’t want to go to war. They don’t want to stay in Melitopol.
They want to go back to Russia but their generals tell them ‘Stay, everything will be fine’. But it is impossible for them to be good in Melitopol. ”
As the conflict approaches the six-month mark, there seems to be no clear end in sight.
However, one European politician, Nico Lange, a German MP and chief of staff of the country’s Federal Defense Minister, said that Russia is now facing “enormous” difficulties.
Speaking to German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) over the weekend, he said the large influx of military aid to Ukraine is changing the dynamic of the Russian invasion.
“The decisive aspect of the past few days is that Russia is now forced to respond to the statements and actions of the Ukrainians,” he said.
“So far, it has been the other way around; the Ukrainians have been forced to respond to everything that Russia does.
Lang continued, saying that Russia “moved large forces to the south, towards both Kherson and Zaporizhzhya,” two regions in southern Ukraine that fell mostly under Russian occupation. It has also recently become the focus of major counter-attacks by Ukrainian forces with the aim of regaining control of it.
“The Ukrainian attack will not look like the attack of the Russians: this gradual barrage that destroys everything in its path,” Lang said. “Instead, it will also rely on revolutionaries, on uprisings in occupied cities, on mobile operations behind enemy lines.”
He added: “The Russians have big problems controlling these areas. There is a lot of partisan activity in the occupied part of the Zaporizhia Territory.
“Russian patrols kill at night. Also in Melitopol, as in Kherson, there are posters directed against the Russian occupiers, there are leaflet campaigns. Something new is constantly being put forward.”
Russia is now unable to “indefinitely escalate” in Ukraine, Lang said, adding that the Russians are facing “tremendous” difficulty in sustaining the conflict.
Updated 08/08/22 07:23AM ET with additional information
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