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VLADIMIR Putin has already lost the war in Ukraine, America’s top general has said.
General Mark Milley said the Russians were “paying a huge price on the battlefield” as an elite unit has now been wiped out for the third time in the Ukraine war.
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The huge loss of Russian troops occurred during the attempted siege of Vuhledar, a strategic settlement in Donetsk.
The elite 155th Marines disappeared like “turkeys on the range” as they stormed the mining town, trying to take the high ground.
General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a NATO meeting: “Russia has lost.
“They have lost strategically, operationally and tactically and are paying a huge price on the battlefield
“Until Putin ends his war of choice, the international community will continue to support Ukraine with the equipment and capabilities it needs.”
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin echoed the view that the Russians were throwing troops into the meat grinder.
“We see Russia bringing a number of new troops into the battlefield.
“Many of these soldiers are poorly trained and poorly equipped, so their casualty rate was very high.”
Colonel Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, said: “The 155th brigade has already had to be manned three times.
“And now almost the entire brigade is destroyed.
“The first time since Irpin and Bucha. the second time they were defeated near Donetsk – they rallied again.
“And now almost the entire brigade has already been destroyed near Vuhledar.”
The fighting around Vuhledar has seen one of the heaviest concentrated military losses the Kremlin has suffered since the start of the war on February 24.
According to POLITICO, the 5,000-man Marine brigade was wiped out.
Russian forces have reportedly been losing between 150 and 300 marines a day since the planned offensive began in January.
Ukrainian officials claimed that the group of enemy troops were killed, wounded or captured.
The devastating losses come days after video emerged of 31 Russian vehicles being hit as they invaded the region.
The total slaughter and tactical failures were condemned by Russian hardliners.
Igor Girkin, a Russian former intelligence officer, called for public show trials to punish incompetent generals responsible for battlefield embarrassments.
Girkin said: “Some of them are complete morons – all the mistakes made before, repeated.”
During the battle, the Ukrainians held the higher ground and were able to pick off the Marines.
Girkin described the scene as “like turkeys on a shooting range”.
The mining town, home to 14,000 people before the war, sits on high ground near the only rail link between Crimea and Donetsk.
It was fortified with Ukrainian artillery after withstanding three months of attacks by Spetsnaz special forces, armored battalions and infantry troops.
The heaviest waves of attack came last week, leading to the Marines’ bloodbath.
Yevgeny Nazarenko, a spokesman for one of the Ukrainian units involved, said the Russian origins were easily traced from the high-rise buildings where they were located.
He said: “We are at the top and they are at the bottom.
“They look great.”
Ukrainian forces also released a video of Russian troops massing on the battlefield as they approached Vuhledar from open fields.
During the video, a Ukrainian gunman can be heard saying: “Go build a cemetery.
“My God, the first column went there and blew up, and then the second column went exactly the same route.”
Tom Cooper, a military historian who has studied the battle, described Vuhledar as “a great, high fortress in the middle of an empty, flat desert”.
The humiliating defeat comes days after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said his troops were in control of the area.
Kyiv’s defense ministry responded with a video showing the destruction of a Russian military column in the area.
The footage showed Russian tanks driving into minefields, bombs destroying armored vehicles, soldiers panicking and dead soldiers strewn on the ground.
Ukrainian officials claimed the majority of the casualties were from the 155th Marine Brigade of the Pacific Fleet, based in Vladivostok.
The 155th became notorious for looting around Kiev last year.
The brigade has been called Russia’s “unhappiest” unit after suffering heavy losses in several failed attacks.
The Russian commander of the East, Lt. Gen. Rustam Muradov, was blamed for the massive casualties.
A group of hard-line military bloggers and media outlets close to Wagner’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, launched an online tyranny slamming Muradov.
A social media channel linked to Wagner threatened Muradov with death after calling him a “sissy b****”.
Another blogger with half a million followers called for public trials “to punish officers, especially high-ranking officers, who demonstrate repeated failures on the battlefield.”
Chronic setbacks at Vuhledar have hurt a brash Putin, who has repeatedly claimed a massive “new offensive” is coming in weeks to coincide with the war’s first anniversary.
The Kremlin is believed to have hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of tanks and hundreds of warplanes preparing for the new offensive.
Putin also ordered his troops to fully occupy the Donetsk region by next month.
Currently, half of the city is under Russian control.
However, the Vuhledar fiasco has encouraged Kiev to believe that Moscow has failed to heal divisions among senior commanders.
Oleksandr V Danylyuk, head of the Center for Defense Reforms think tank in Kyiv, told the Daily Mail: “This is a serious setback with huge losses from a brigade.
“If they continue to use their troops in this way, it could lead to a collapse of Russian military forces during their expected major offensive.”
Vuhledar is about 100 miles from Bakhmut, the focus of the war’s heaviest fighting for several months.
Both sides suffered heavy casualties there, as Russia released huge numbers of conscripts and prisoners recruited into the “meat machine”.
Ukrainian officials claim that 824 Russian soldiers die on average per day.
This is four times higher than the rates seen last summer.
The British Ministry of Defense confirmed the figure as “probably accurate”.
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