Translated from Russian by Gleb Bazov / Edited by @GBabeuf
Photograph: The Inevitable End for Any Fascist
According to the Ukrainian Minister of Defence, Valeriy Geletei, as quoted by Obozrevatel.com:
Ukraine lost seven military transport aircraft in repeated attempts to deliver cargoes of food and ammunition to the soldiers of the 72nd Mechanized and the 79th Airborne Brigades.Amusingly, Geletei’s numbers exceed those provided by Militiamen, who claim to have downed a total of four transport aircraft.
This was announced by the Ukrainian Minister of Defence, Valeriy Geletei, during a broadcast of the “Shuster Live” talk show.
Geletei stated: “The situation on the border with Russia is very difficult. We lost seven aircraft while delivering cargo to our forces on the border.” According to him, the provisioning of Ukrainian soldiers with food and weaponry has been severely compromised because “the terrorists have everything that the Russian army has in its arsenal.”
And now for the latest news from the Southern Cauldron, from a person who attended the surrender negotiations.
The situation is such that the encircled group of junta forces now sits in the area of Krasnopartisansk, having rolled away from the border.
Their food rations ran out this morning, and they have minimal amounts of drinking water left. There is ammunition only for small arms, and even this will only last for another couple of days’ fighting at most.
At the meeting, the junta representative set out conditions requiring that they be permitted to destroy all the military hardware (altogether around seventy units: there is no fuel for ninety percent of the surviving vehicles, and there is virtually no ammunition) and be granted safe passage to Ukraine after surrendering all the small arms and the remaining ammunition.
Quite reasonably, the Militia representatives responded that the military hardware must be left intact, that all the small arms must be surrendered and that the passage should lie through the territory of the Russian Federation, with the soldiers being given the opportunity voluntarily to decide whether they wish to continue participating in what is happening or wish to remain in Russia.
In the event of a refusal of these terms, the positions of the surrounded troops will continue to be levelled using MLRS and conventional artillery, especially since they have long been investigated and there has been no problem in covering them with artillery for over a week. According to the estimates of our source, the roughly expected timescale for the termination of the Southern Cauldron saga is two to three days (this is an optimistic prognosis; a realistic one suggests four to five days), simply due to exhaustion of the remaining ammunition and the issues with drinking water.
There have been no battles as such; the Militia simply continues to blockade the encircled forces without entering into close combat, preferring instead simply to shell the surrounded troops with conventional and rocket artillery.
In view of the large losses of the enemy’s military air transport, the delivery of supplies has been practically reduced to zero, and the aircraft that manage to break through the Militia’s air defences are forced to drop their cargo from a significant height, as a result of which part of it falls on territory controlled by the Milita. However, even if a hundred percent of the cargo would have reached the Southern Cauldron, it still would not have been sufficient.
The Militia should, of course, speed up the process, as the freed-up forces and the potential trophies should enable it to stabilize the front and to commence preparations for a counter-offensive.
