Lenin is the pseudonym of a Russian soldier whose name is unknown but whose grim experience was recounted by one of his confidants in a September 5 phone call intercepted by a Western intelligence agency. Yahoo News was unable to independently verify the identity of the speakers or what caused the described massacre. But the anecdote has been watching what Russian soldiers and their increasingly frustrated boosters have been saying for days on social media. Ukraine’s multi-pronged attacks, first around Russian-held Kherson and now, somewhat unexpectedly, around Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, are taking a significant toll on the Russian military. A resident of Kherson greets a Ukrainian soldier on July 25. (Ivan Chernichkin/Zaborona/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images) Videos showing alleged Russian prisoners of war — the latest being a lieutenant colonel — have flooded Telegram channels. Although Kyiv imposed a media blackout in Kherson at the start of its campaign last week, the government confirmed the recapture of significant square miles of territory. On September 7, Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command announced that it had captured several settlements, adding to two villages captured three days earlier. The standard of blue and gold has been raised on rooftops throughout the region. Online trackers reported an increase in Russian equipment losses, sharing numerous videos showing victorious Ukrainian troops with the spoils of war left behind as the Russians retreated. Tellingly, Ukraine’s fleet of Turkish Bayraktar TB-2 drones now strike targets of opportunity along the front line, no longer intended for larger quarries such as command and control centers, air defense systems and logistics vehicles. The Ukrainians have also used new divisions equipped with NATO weapons, notably Polish T-72M tanks and a variety of Western armored personnel carriers. These divisions had been seen training with this equipment, newly arrived in the country, in the previous months. The story continues The speed with which Ukrainian forces appear to be making progress has impressed Western observers. But the real surprise is that they have also launched a simultaneous attack hundreds of miles north in Kharkiv, near the eastern border with Russia. The city, one of Ukraine’s largest, has been under constant shelling since Russia launched its invasion in February. The aftermath of a Russian missile attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, September 7. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) Igor Girkin, a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officer and former commander of Russian proxy forces in the occupied Donetsk province, posted on the social networking site Telegram that Russian forces were surrounded in Balaklia, a town in Kharkiv. region. Girkin obliquely praised the “extraordinary audacity” of the Ukrainian attacks for their speed and aggressiveness. Girkin also chafed at the poor training of the Russian National Guard and the Russian Air Force’s “care” to refrain from retaliation. At least one detachment of the Russian national guard apparently managed to get trapped in the encirclement of Balaklia. And on Wednesday, Gray Zone, a Telegram channel run by the Russian mercenary group Wagner, posted that Russian units were leaving Balakliya. “The city will probably surrender.” The Ukrainians also seem to be trapping the Russians in the south. All modes of transportation for the Russians across the Dnipro River are now either destroyed or impassable for motorized traffic. The Antonovsky road bridge, which had been pounded by US-supplied high-mobility artillery systems (HIMARS) for weeks, is out of service. The road bridge over the Nova Kakhovka dam in Kherson appears to have collapsed, judging by satellite images. Several other smaller crossings, including a road and a floating bridge over the Inhulets tributary at Darivka, have been destroyed. The collective result almost halves the Russian-controlled zone on the west bank of the Dnipro. The push to retake Kherson and its provincial capital, the first major population center Russia captured when the invasion began in late February, has been telegraphed for months by Ukrainian officials. Ukrainian artillerymen on the front line in Kherson, July 15. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) Kherson is located at the mouth of the Dnipro and serves as an important administrative and transportation hub. For the Russians, it is the region just north of Crimea and therefore its loss gives Ukraine closer proximity from which to launch attacks on the peninsula that has been held by the Kremlin since 2014. Russia had made plans to stage a “ referendum’ to effectively annex Kherson. as Crimea did. Those plans have now been “shipped,” according to TASS. Moscow’s ultimate goal in southern Ukraine has always been to create a strategic land corridor, stretching east from Crimea to the Russian mainland and west through Odesa, reaching the unrecognized Russian-backed breakaway state of Transnistria. This would have encircled Ukraine, decimating the economic prospects of a country that relies heavily on seaborne exports. The drumbeat for Kherson appears to have been as much an information operation as a prediction of an upcoming military operation. It forced Russia to transfer tactical battalion groups from other fronts to shore up its defenses, putting them in a battlespace where the Ukrainians felt more confident fighting. This game also helps account for the attacks on Russia’s Saki Air Base in Crimea last month. The destruction of half of the Black Sea Fleet’s naval air force, according to a Western intelligence official, prompted the Russians to withdraw their air force further from Kherson, no doubt contributing to the hesitant attitude Girkin alludes to. Igor Strelkov, also known as Igor Girkin, the supreme military commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, at a press conference in Donetsk in 2014. (Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images) In a new essay on Ukraine’s strategic outlook for 2023, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the supreme commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, and Lt. Gen. Mykhailo Zabrodskyi, first vice-chairman of the National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament, acknowledged that “a series of successful missile strikes” were used against Saki Air Base. This suggests that Ukraine does indeed possess previously undisclosed long-range munitions capable of striking deep into enemy territory. So far, Ukraine’s casualties on the southern front do not appear to be overwhelming, according to the Economist, who visited hospitals in Odesa and Mykolaiv, northwest of Kherson. A doctor working in the main emergency unit interviewed by the agency said on average 15 to 30 soldiers came in each day. “More than usual, but not our worst nightmare.”
