The Donbass region on the Ukrainian-Russian border is currently heavily contested. “It’s fierce, it’s the most intense fighting, open fighting I’ve seen since the beginning of the war,” says military expert Prof. Michael Clarke on “Sky news”.
A bitter battle is raging along the “entire line of conflict in Donbass,” Clarke continued. One thought that the battle there could be over in a few weeks, “but no, the Russians are holding up bravely,” analyzes the professor. The Russians have moved their good airborne troops from Kherson to the Donbass region and they are “really doing well,” according to the expert.
But the losses are immense, says Clarke. The reason is a new tactic used by the Russian military – it could hardly be more cruel. “The Russians throw men forward, it’s like human wave attacks,” Clarke describes.
The expert explains the Kremlin’s costly tactics. There is an order in which the Russian soldiers act at the front. “They have criminals on the front lines, people they got out of jails, then mobilized troops behind them, and then the regular troops follow behind them.”
The foremost troops storm the front on foot. The result: hundreds of deaths every day. The Russians are “losing seven or eight hundred a day. And the Ukrainians are also losing quite a number of troops, but fewer than that,” the military expert said in the Sky interview.
The regular troops fighting in the third line on the front line “are called lockdown troops and their job is to shoot at anyone who retreats, so the idea is you go forward or you die,” Clarke explains the Putin Tactics. The professor predicts, “They cannot sustain those losses even if they don’t appreciate them.”
But first of all, the Russian tactics have resulted in some territorial gains on the front in Donbass.
