Group of 300 Russians eliminated by Ukraine troops
Russia said on Friday it had finished calling up reservists to fight in Ukraine, having drafted hundreds of thousands in a month and sending more than a quarter of them already to the battlefield after a divisive mobilisation campaign that was its first since World War Two.
The United States, meanwhile, announced it would send another $275 million in military assistance to Ukraine, including arms, munitions and equipment from Pentagon inventories, bringing U.S. military assistance to the country under the Biden administration to more than $18.5 billion.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was working to provide Ukraine with air defence capabilities it needs, with two initial sophisticated anti-aircraft NASAMS ready for delivery to the country next month.
He said the United States was also working with allies and partners to enable delivery of their own air defence systems to Ukraine. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he doubted Moscow has finished calling up soldiers.
In his nightly televised address, he said Russian forces “are so poorly prepared and equipped, so brutally used by their command, that it allows us to presume that very soon Russia may need a new wave of people to send to the war.”
The divisive mobilisation drive has seen tens of thousands of men flee the country and gave rise to the first sustained public protests against the war.
“The task set by you of (mobilising) 300,000 people has been completed. No further measures are planned,” Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin at a televised meeting in the Kremlin. He said 82,000 had already been sent to the combat zone and the rest were training.
On 28 October, the Armed Forces of Ukraine eliminated a group of around 300 Russian soldiers preparing for an assault near Maiorsk in Donetsk Oblast.
“As a result of high-precision strikes carried out by units of Ukraine’s defence forces, a group of 300 occupiers preparing for a new assault was eliminated yesterday in the vicinity of Maiorsk.”
The following day, around 60 slightly injured Russian soldiers were hospitalised in Horlivka. Up to 20 Russian soldiers were killed and 30 sustained injuries of various severity in the villages of Chervonopopivka in Luhansk Oblast as a result of an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Russian forces have been forced to evacuate injured soldiers to the city of Voronezh by bus as a result of the lack of a reliable air ambulance service, the poorly prepared medical infrastructure in Belgorod Oblast, and the fact that all local hospitals there are already at full capacity.—Agencies
