Friday 13 May 2022 08:44 AM Ukraine war: Russians make second failed attempt at crossing river trends now

Russia has made another failed attempt to cross a Donbas river where an entire battalion was wiped out by Ukrainian artillery - losing more men in the process with survivors forced to swim to safety. 

Putin's troops were trying to rescue men and vehicles that had got stranded on the wrong side of the Donets River, near Biolhorivka, after the first attempt on May 8 ended with their pontoon bridges being sunk by an artillery barrage that destroyed dozens of armoured vehicles and may have killed more than 1,000 troops.

But their rescue mission was found out and subjected to the same fate. Fresh satellite images taken near Biolhorivka show yet another sunken pontoon bridge along with half a dozen destroyed or abandoned vehicles. 

Russia has lost more than 70 vehicles and seen two infantry battalions mangled in four days of attempts to bridge the river, according to Ukrainian investigative site InformNapalm.

It is just the latest humiliation for Putin's army - once ranked second in the world - after commanders failed to capture the capital Kyiv, were beaten back from Mykolaiv by a rag-tag band of territorial defence troops and civilians, and got their Black Sea flagship Moskva sunk by Ukrainian missiles.

Commanders are now trying to seize control of the Donbas region - cynically claiming that was their true objective all along - but have so-far failed to make any significant breakthrough in almost a month of fighting, with Kyiv claiming Russia has suffered 'colossal' losses.

The attack on Bilohorivka was almost certainly designed to surround the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk - which straddle the Donets River - in a pincer movement from west and east. Had it succeeded, Ukrainian defenders would have been cut off from reinforcement and re-supply, facing a similar fate to those in Mariupol.

Having failed to take Bilohorivka, Russian forces now pushing into the outskirts of Severodonetsk face street-to-street fighting in order to take it. Seizing Lysychansk will require them to make a river crossing somewhere, after Ukrainian defenders destroyed permanent bridges. It remains to be seen whether they are capable of doing so.

If Russia can seize the two cities, it would allow them to claim the Luhansk region has been 'liberated' from Ukrainian control - providing a propaganda boost to the Kremlin months after Putin declared it to be independent and vowed to 'defend' it against what he claimed was Ukrainian aggression.

His commanders would then face a bitter fight to take Sloyansk and Kramatorsk - some 40 miles to the west - using the same surround-and-capture tactics. Coupled with the fall of Mariupol, where hundreds of Ukrainian troops are staging a last stand inside a steel works, it would allow Putin to claim victory in Donbas.

Provided he has enough men left to defend against Ukrainian counter-attacks, that could prompt a declaration of overall victory for his 'special military operation' and may see a halt in the fighting while some kind of peace deal is hashed out between the two sides.

Alternatively, the 'victory' could prompt Putin to push further - perhaps renewing attacks along the Black Sea coast towards Mykolaiv and Odesa, leaving what remains of the country landlocked and deprived of lucrative oceangoing trading routes.

But such an outcome is far from certain, and Kyiv is likely to be extremely mistrustful of any ceasefire agreement - fearing it will only give Russia time to rearm and renew its attack, as happened between the last invasion in 2014 and the current war which began on February 24.

At the very least, the country is sure to demand security guarantees from the West to protect it from being victimised a third time - or will simply refuse to sign and keep trying to break Russian lines using weapons supplied by the West.

In the event that Russia cannot take the Donbas, Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said this week that Ukraine's 'victory' aim would be to reverse the tide of the war and push Russia back - not just to the areas it held before the invasion but entirely out of Ukrainian territory.

That would mean re-taking areas of Donetsk and Luhansk held before the current invasion, and an assault on Russian naval bases in Crimea. It remains to be seen whether Ukraine has the manpower for such attacks.