After attacking several fronts, Ukraine concentrated all its troops in this city, where the invaders, uncoordinated and with few resources, preferred to retreat rather than die or be locked in an “embarrassing” mass raid.
Russian troops decided to withdraw from Liman rather than face the dilemma of massive loss of life or the shameful image of thousands of soldiers being captured at once by the Ukrainians, just one day after President Vladimir Putin’s Russian annexation of the four occupied regions in the neighboring country. The option chosen was to dress up as a retreat for a subsequent reorganization of the defense line, although US and British intelligence believe the invading army has not remained intact.
He suffered very significant losses during his flight. The images released yesterday show dozens of corpses in the gutters or scattered in the meadows. The Russians had to break through the Ukrainian encirclement to withdraw through a narrow corridor into Lugansk Oblast. The exit was so wild that fighters from both sides became embroiled in a small-arms fight, leaving a trail of dead and wounded that Moscow and Kiev are unwilling to reveal.
British intelligence says the Kremlin did not have sufficient troops in Liman to defend its position. An assessment that coincides with the justification of the Russian Defense Ministry itself for ordering the withdrawal. The Ukrainians “outnumbered us and were outnumbered,” a high command explained, so the General Staff preferred to issue the evacuation order before the pincers closed the city completely. In such a case, the occupants would have had only the choice of continuing the fight to the death or surrendering in an “embarrassing” mass surrender, a Moscow correspondent said.
The first analyzes by Russian experts explain the defeat not only because of the superiority of the rival, but also because of some mistakes that seem to have become “typical” in this war: the individuality of the officers in decision-making, the delay in supplies, the poor coordination of units on the ground and the repeated abandonment of their posts by mercenaries.
Chechen leader Kadyrov, in a protracted tirade against the General Staff, accused General Alexander Lapin of dispersing the soldiers through the city’s defenses without giving them ammunition or radios to communicate with each other. He also accused him of having moved his headquarters to Starobelsk, inland from Lugansk: “How can you quickly manage units that are 150 kilometers from them?”
In addition, strategists believe that the military faces a serious lack of modern reconnaissance and electronic surveillance equipment, at least the level of sophistication of the systems with which the US supplies the troops in Kiev. They recall that one of the successes of the occupation of Liman last April was precisely the success of the National Guard in destroying Ukrainian espionage and attacking drones, thus clearing the way for the infantry and special forces. .
How was this enclave lost? Its origins lie in the recapture of Kharkov three weeks ago by local forces, which allowed them to regroup and focus their next target in Lugansk. In the past twenty days, the Kiev army has penetrated several points of the Russian defense line north of Kupiansk, in Lisichansk and near Liman. Apparently, the fighting in these areas was of no benefit to the Ukrainians, whose commandos then decided to focus on Liman with all their available war material.
According to a correspondent accompanying the invading contingent, Kiev attacked with its reserves stationed in Slavyansk, Seversk tank units, drones and light armor that “squeezed” one enclave after another on its way to Liman and closed the roads. A non-trivial fact. The Russian artillery had to devote itself not only to stopping the offensive, but also to protecting a single path of withdrawal, the “corridor of life”, through which the Russian soldiers left.
Source: La Verdad
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