This past weekend saw Russia suffer its greatest military loss in 80 years as horrifying new information about Russian crimes committed on Ukrainian people came to light.
Just days after Vladimir Putin blatantly grabbed four occupied Ukrainian territories, triumphant Ukrainian troops yesterday hoisted their nation’s flag at the gate to the strategically significant town of Lyman.
Following their encirclement by Ukraine’s quick assault, some of Putin’s forces are said to be stuck in Lyman, a significant supply base. They are forced to choose between giving up and fighting their way out, both of which would likely result in significant losses for them.
But when fresh accounts of Russian crimes surfaced and concerns mounted that a humiliated Vladimir Putin may turn to deploying nuclear weapons, a breakthrough in eastern Ukraine occurred. According to Ukraine, at least 24 civilians—including 13 children and a pregnant woman—were shot dead during a Russian strike on a road convoy.
Near the recently retaken town of Kupiansk in northeastern Ukraine, Ukrainian military showed reporters a collection of cars covered with gunshot holes and a number of bodies wearing civilian clothing.
Russians opened fire on people at close range, according to Oleg Synegubov, the regional governor.
Russian military reportedly opened fire on a convoy of seven automobiles as residents tried to leave the conflict, according to the prosecutor’s office for the area.
In a statement, the office said that on September 25, when people were attempting to flee, “the automobile line was fired by the Russian army.” “Two automobiles with children and their parents inside have fully burned.” Ramzan Kadyrov, one of Putin’s lieutenants and the leader of the Russian enclave of Chechnya, stated yesterday that Moscow should consider unleashing a low-yield nuclear bomb in Ukraine, words that would fuel concerns of much worse atrocities.
Kadyrov expressed his own view that harsher actions should be adopted, up to and including the deployment of low-yield nuclear weapons, in a Telegram message criticizing Russian officers for deserting Lyman. His alarming remarks were:
Yesterday, Kyiv received air-raid alerts as Ukraine prepared for a volley of missile assaults in retribution for Russia’s defeats in the country’s east;
According to the UK Ministry of Defence, Russian soldiers ‘very definitely’ hit a humanitarian convoy last Friday in the southern Zaporizhzhia area. In the incident, at least 30 persons in civilian cars died;
l Russian military seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s director as part of what seems to be a conspiracy to hand over the facility to Rosatam, a Russian energy company;
At a Russian air base in Crimea, there have reportedly been explosions.
Russian troops in Lyman are “encircled,” according to Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern army, who also claimed yesterday that areas around the town had been retaken. Up to 5,500 Russian soldiers may have been present in Lyman at one time, but it is uncertain how many are still there since some of them fled or were killed before being surrounded.
According to Mr. Cherevatyi, Ukrainian soldiers control the majority of the exits from the city, and some Russian efforts to flee “had not been particularly successful.” Later, the Russian defense ministry said that its forces had left the town.
The allied [Russian] soldiers were evacuated from Lyman to better defenses, according to a Russian official news service, because of the fear of encirclement. The chief of office for President Volodymyr Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, shared video of Ukrainian troops hoisting their blue-and-yellow flag on social media.
Kyiv will now utilize the town as a staging area as it makes an effort to expand into the Luhansk region.
The Royal United Services Institute think tank’s former director-general, Professor Michael Clarke, said that Russia had suffered its worst war defeat since losses to Nazi Germany in 1943.
Since the Second World War, they haven’t suffered a brigade-level setback like this. It was a guerilla war, but they were defeated there.
Kadyrov’s remarks regarding nuclear weapons, according to Prof. Clarke, did not make them more likely to be deployed.
He is on the verge of madness. He believes he has a great deal of power in Russia, but he doesn’t. The employment of tactical nuclear weapons is very far away.
If Russia utilized nuclear weapons, there would be “catastrophic repercussions,” according to the United States. According to a source close to the presidential administration in Ukraine, Russia thinks Putin would deploy chemical weapons as a first line of defense.
Lyman has been retaken by Ukraine after Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia in eastern Ukraine were unlawfully annexed on Friday by Moscow via staged referendums.
According to a western security source, Kyiv’s victories on the battlefield and the takeover of the four Ukrainian regions “make this the most perilous phase of the war since it started in February.”