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Thursday, January 05, 2023 10:27:42 PM
Abandoned Russian base holds secrets of retreat in Ukraine
"Dozens of Russian soldiers killed in Ukrainian strike on New Year's Eve"
Russian Roulette
IMAGE - The former Russian base in Balakliia, Ukraine, seen from the air. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT
When Russian troops fled the Ukrainian town of Balakliia last month, they left behind thousands of documents that detail the inner workings of the Russian war machine.
By MARI SAITO, MARIA TSVETKOVA and ANTON ZVEREV
Photographs by ZOHRA BENSEMRA
Filed: Oct. 26, 2022, 11 a.m. GMT
BALAKLIIA, Ukraine – The Russian soldiers had fled weeks before. But they left their traces everywhere.
Concrete steps led into the basement of their hastily abandoned headquarters in this small riverside town in eastern Ukraine. A bunker smelling of damp lay behind a steel door marked “Command Group.” Papers, some charred, were stuffed into a furnace. Others were scattered across the floor.
In a floral notebook, an unnamed staff officer left a sketch of a cartoon soldier and mused about going home. The book’s 91 handwritten pages contained other information, too: coordinates of Russian intelligence units, records of calls from commanders, details of battles, men killed and equipment destroyed. And accounts of a breakdown in morale and discipline.
In all, the bunker yielded thousands of pages of documents. Reuters reviewed more than a thousand of them. They detail the inner workings of the Russian military and shed new light on events leading up to one of President Vladimir Putin's most stinging battlefield defeats: Russia’s chaotic retreat from Ukraine’s northeast in September.
Russian posters on the walls of the abandoned base in Balakliia. One says: “We bring peace.” REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra 1/12
In the weeks before that defeat, Russian forces were struggling with surveillance and electronic warfare. They were using off-the-shelf drones flown by barely trained soldiers. Their equipment for jamming Ukrainian communications was often out of action.? By the end of August, the documents show, the force was depleted, hit by death, desertions and combat stress. Two units – accounting for about a sixth of the total force – were operating at 20% of their full strength.
The documents also reveal the increasing effectiveness of Ukraine’s forces and offer clues to how the eight-month-old war might unfold, with Russia now under intense pressure on the southern front around the Black Sea coast. In the weeks before their retreat, Russian forces around Balakliia, a town 90 kilometres south of Kharkiv, came under heavy bombardment from HIMARS rocket launchers, recently supplied by the United States. The precision missiles repeatedly hit command posts.
A Russian officer who served in the Balakliia force for three months, described to Reuters a sense of menace hanging over the occupiers. One of his friends bled to death in early September after a Ukrainian strike on a command post in a nearby village.
“It’s a game of roulette,” said the officer, who asked to be identified by his military call sign Plakat Junior 888. “You either get lucky, or you are unlucky. The strikes can land anywhere.”
[...]
Reuters verified the authenticity of the documents by visiting five abandoned military outposts in northeast Ukraine whose coordinates were recorded in the cache. In each instance, local residents confirmed that Russian forces were stationed there. Reuters reporters also interviewed five soldiers who served in the Balakliia force, and cross-checked details in the documents with a contemporaneous account kept by one of the Russian servicemen. Reuters is making available here some of the trove.
[...]
Life under occupation
Russian troops occupied Balakliia, a quiet town of squat apartment buildings surrounded by bucolic villages, in early March. To the south was the Russian controlled Donbas region; to the north the city of Kharkiv, a Ukrainian stronghold.
The soldiers occupied a rundown vehicle repair complex on the outskirts of town. It became the command centre for Balakliia and dozens of surrounding villages and farms. It was here, in the basement, that Reuters found the document cache.
[...]
Lists of personnel showed that conscripts from the Russian-controlled Ukrainian region of Luhansk fought alongside men from Russia’s 11th Army Corps. The soldiers scribbled on the walls of the base and put up fliers warning of Ukraine’s descent into Nazi rule if they withdrew. The invaders had brought with them old Soviet maps of Ukraine. A poster admonished the soldiers: Do not smoke, do not drop litter.
The notebook, kept by the unknown staff officer, contained coordinates for Russian military intelligence and other units scattered around the area. One unit had taken over a Balakliia kindergarten.
Lyovochkin, the site’s former manager, said Ukrainian investigators had visited the base repeatedly since the Russians retreated. De-miners were still removing the ordnance. “Everything is mined,” he said. “They were really protecting themselves.”
The base also served as a detention centre for captured Ukrainian veterans. One military veteran told Reuters he was hooded, beaten and thrown into a cellar, where he was held for six days with several others.
[...]
Others were detained in Balakliia’s police station. Two men - one a firefighter, the other an inspector in the emergency services - said their jailers beat them with wooden batons and administered electric shocks.? Russian soldiers questioned the inspector repeatedly about his calls with his supervisor in Kharkiv. They accused him of compiling a list of Ukrainians who had collaborated with the Russians, which he denies. The firefighter said he was accused of hiding weapons and organising a local partisan group, which he too denies. Albina Strilets, a 33-year-old logistics coordinator for the emergency services, recounted that she and other women were held simply for being “pro-Ukrainian.”
“I heard men being beaten so badly that at one point I heard a Russian soldier say, ‘bring a body bag,’” Strilets said. “Another time I heard a woman being raped upstairs and crying for hours.” Strilets said she broke the cell’s toilet so “it sounded like a waterfall” and would block out the woman’s screaming.
[...]
Under occupation, much of the policing of the population fell to the force from separatist Luhansk. It was a rag-tag group with even fewer resources than their Russian counterparts, the documents show. One Luhansk corporal was 64 years old. Another fighter was treated for finger wounds after the chamber of his Mosin rifle exploded, a medic wrote. The rifle was developed in the late 19th century and went out of production decades ago, as Reuters reported .. https://www.reuters.com/world/conscripts-sent-fight-by-pro-russia-donbas-get-little-training-old-rifles-poor-2022-04-04/ .. in April.
A spreadsheet at the Balakliia bunker showed a typical Russian sergeant was paid 202,084 roubles ($3,200) a month in salary plus bonuses, while a sergeant in the separatist force received just 91,200 roubles ($1,400). The head of a Luhansk flame-thrower company recorded in one document that eight of his subordinates had previous convictions - including one man for rape and sexual assault.
[...]
Near breaking point
Documents in the bunker show that Russian commanders understood the shortcomings of their force.
On July 19, hours before the battle of Hrakove, an unnamed officer scribbled on the daily briefing note a plea for drones to track the enemy: ?“Quadcopters!!! Urgent!” Quadcopter drones are generally not military grade and can be bought in store and on the internet. As Reuters reported in June, Russian troops have relied on crowdfunding to buy drones.
The Balakliia force finally took receipt of three off-the-shelf Mavic-3 quadcopter drones on July 20, the daily report recorded. They weren’t ready to fly, however, because their software wasn’t yet installed. The same daily report stated 15 soldiers were being trained how to operate them.
[...]
The notebook also recorded the desertion of Roman Elistratov, a corporal in the 9th motorised rifle regiment, which felt the full force of the Ukrainian onslaught. Elistratov didn’t respond to messages from Reuters. Later, the author wrote of a soldier who deliberately shot himself in the hand to avoid further action. Command should be notified of the incident, he added.
None of these details made it into the official reports seen by Reuters.
[...]
Chaos and retreat
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-base/
"Dozens of Russian soldiers killed in Ukrainian strike on New Year's Eve"
Russian Roulette
IMAGE - The former Russian base in Balakliia, Ukraine, seen from the air. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT
When Russian troops fled the Ukrainian town of Balakliia last month, they left behind thousands of documents that detail the inner workings of the Russian war machine.
By MARI SAITO, MARIA TSVETKOVA and ANTON ZVEREV
Photographs by ZOHRA BENSEMRA
Filed: Oct. 26, 2022, 11 a.m. GMT
BALAKLIIA, Ukraine – The Russian soldiers had fled weeks before. But they left their traces everywhere.
Concrete steps led into the basement of their hastily abandoned headquarters in this small riverside town in eastern Ukraine. A bunker smelling of damp lay behind a steel door marked “Command Group.” Papers, some charred, were stuffed into a furnace. Others were scattered across the floor.
In a floral notebook, an unnamed staff officer left a sketch of a cartoon soldier and mused about going home. The book’s 91 handwritten pages contained other information, too: coordinates of Russian intelligence units, records of calls from commanders, details of battles, men killed and equipment destroyed. And accounts of a breakdown in morale and discipline.
In all, the bunker yielded thousands of pages of documents. Reuters reviewed more than a thousand of them. They detail the inner workings of the Russian military and shed new light on events leading up to one of President Vladimir Putin's most stinging battlefield defeats: Russia’s chaotic retreat from Ukraine’s northeast in September.
Russian posters on the walls of the abandoned base in Balakliia. One says: “We bring peace.” REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra 1/12
In the weeks before that defeat, Russian forces were struggling with surveillance and electronic warfare. They were using off-the-shelf drones flown by barely trained soldiers. Their equipment for jamming Ukrainian communications was often out of action.? By the end of August, the documents show, the force was depleted, hit by death, desertions and combat stress. Two units – accounting for about a sixth of the total force – were operating at 20% of their full strength.
The documents also reveal the increasing effectiveness of Ukraine’s forces and offer clues to how the eight-month-old war might unfold, with Russia now under intense pressure on the southern front around the Black Sea coast. In the weeks before their retreat, Russian forces around Balakliia, a town 90 kilometres south of Kharkiv, came under heavy bombardment from HIMARS rocket launchers, recently supplied by the United States. The precision missiles repeatedly hit command posts.
A Russian officer who served in the Balakliia force for three months, described to Reuters a sense of menace hanging over the occupiers. One of his friends bled to death in early September after a Ukrainian strike on a command post in a nearby village.
“It’s a game of roulette,” said the officer, who asked to be identified by his military call sign Plakat Junior 888. “You either get lucky, or you are unlucky. The strikes can land anywhere.”
[...]
Reuters verified the authenticity of the documents by visiting five abandoned military outposts in northeast Ukraine whose coordinates were recorded in the cache. In each instance, local residents confirmed that Russian forces were stationed there. Reuters reporters also interviewed five soldiers who served in the Balakliia force, and cross-checked details in the documents with a contemporaneous account kept by one of the Russian servicemen. Reuters is making available here some of the trove.
[...]
Life under occupation
Russian troops occupied Balakliia, a quiet town of squat apartment buildings surrounded by bucolic villages, in early March. To the south was the Russian controlled Donbas region; to the north the city of Kharkiv, a Ukrainian stronghold.
The soldiers occupied a rundown vehicle repair complex on the outskirts of town. It became the command centre for Balakliia and dozens of surrounding villages and farms. It was here, in the basement, that Reuters found the document cache.
[...]
Lists of personnel showed that conscripts from the Russian-controlled Ukrainian region of Luhansk fought alongside men from Russia’s 11th Army Corps. The soldiers scribbled on the walls of the base and put up fliers warning of Ukraine’s descent into Nazi rule if they withdrew. The invaders had brought with them old Soviet maps of Ukraine. A poster admonished the soldiers: Do not smoke, do not drop litter.
The notebook, kept by the unknown staff officer, contained coordinates for Russian military intelligence and other units scattered around the area. One unit had taken over a Balakliia kindergarten.
Lyovochkin, the site’s former manager, said Ukrainian investigators had visited the base repeatedly since the Russians retreated. De-miners were still removing the ordnance. “Everything is mined,” he said. “They were really protecting themselves.”
The base also served as a detention centre for captured Ukrainian veterans. One military veteran told Reuters he was hooded, beaten and thrown into a cellar, where he was held for six days with several others.
[...]
Others were detained in Balakliia’s police station. Two men - one a firefighter, the other an inspector in the emergency services - said their jailers beat them with wooden batons and administered electric shocks.? Russian soldiers questioned the inspector repeatedly about his calls with his supervisor in Kharkiv. They accused him of compiling a list of Ukrainians who had collaborated with the Russians, which he denies. The firefighter said he was accused of hiding weapons and organising a local partisan group, which he too denies. Albina Strilets, a 33-year-old logistics coordinator for the emergency services, recounted that she and other women were held simply for being “pro-Ukrainian.”
“I heard men being beaten so badly that at one point I heard a Russian soldier say, ‘bring a body bag,’” Strilets said. “Another time I heard a woman being raped upstairs and crying for hours.” Strilets said she broke the cell’s toilet so “it sounded like a waterfall” and would block out the woman’s screaming.
[...]
Under occupation, much of the policing of the population fell to the force from separatist Luhansk. It was a rag-tag group with even fewer resources than their Russian counterparts, the documents show. One Luhansk corporal was 64 years old. Another fighter was treated for finger wounds after the chamber of his Mosin rifle exploded, a medic wrote. The rifle was developed in the late 19th century and went out of production decades ago, as Reuters reported .. https://www.reuters.com/world/conscripts-sent-fight-by-pro-russia-donbas-get-little-training-old-rifles-poor-2022-04-04/ .. in April.
A spreadsheet at the Balakliia bunker showed a typical Russian sergeant was paid 202,084 roubles ($3,200) a month in salary plus bonuses, while a sergeant in the separatist force received just 91,200 roubles ($1,400). The head of a Luhansk flame-thrower company recorded in one document that eight of his subordinates had previous convictions - including one man for rape and sexual assault.
[...]
Near breaking point
Documents in the bunker show that Russian commanders understood the shortcomings of their force.
On July 19, hours before the battle of Hrakove, an unnamed officer scribbled on the daily briefing note a plea for drones to track the enemy: ?“Quadcopters!!! Urgent!” Quadcopter drones are generally not military grade and can be bought in store and on the internet. As Reuters reported in June, Russian troops have relied on crowdfunding to buy drones.
The Balakliia force finally took receipt of three off-the-shelf Mavic-3 quadcopter drones on July 20, the daily report recorded. They weren’t ready to fly, however, because their software wasn’t yet installed. The same daily report stated 15 soldiers were being trained how to operate them.
[...]
The notebook also recorded the desertion of Roman Elistratov, a corporal in the 9th motorised rifle regiment, which felt the full force of the Ukrainian onslaught. Elistratov didn’t respond to messages from Reuters. Later, the author wrote of a soldier who deliberately shot himself in the hand to avoid further action. Command should be notified of the incident, he added.
None of these details made it into the official reports seen by Reuters.
[...]
Chaos and retreat
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-base/
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