Ukraine's Counteroffensive Will Surely Fail

Ukraine finally launched their long-awaited counteroffensive when they sent in mechanized brigades, including heavy battle tanks, along with conventional troops to assault Russian locations in the southern Donetsk region reportedly on June 04. However, things are not going their way. 

 

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Friday that ten Ukrainian assaults were repelled in one single day. As a result, Kiev lost more than 415 service members, five tanks, ten armored personnel vehicles, and other hardware, according to officials in Moscow. 

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin himself made the claim that Kiev’s forces are “taking heavy casualties” which outnumber Russia’s by a factor of ten. 

 

The MoD even revealed that more than 10,000 Russian troops have received bonuses for destroying or capturing major enemy weapon systems during the special military operation against Ukraine. Russian soldiers have been paid between 50,000 and 300,000 rubles ($600 and $3,600) for personally taking out a tank, an artillery gun, a fighter jet, or other piece of military equipment, according to the statistics. 

 

In 2022, 7,064 servicemen merited such remuneration for destroying a total of 11,586 pieces of Ukrainian military equipment. In the first five months of this year, the figures were 3,193 and 4,415, respectively, the ministry said. 

 

The biggest payoffs went to airmen and air defense operators for shooting down enemy jets and helicopters, and to soldiers for destroying Tochka-U and HIMARS rocket launchers. Ukrainian naval drones, which have been used for attacks on Crimea, were valued by the military leadership at $2,400 apiece. 

 

According to RT, some private Russian citizens have also offered bounties to frontline troops. In one recent example, entertainer Grigory Leps said he and other like-minded people had pooled resources to pay out 1 million rubles ($13,000) for each Western tank destroyed by Russian soldiers.

 

Россия (Rossiya) will be victorious!