The Russian government has claimed armed Ukrainian nationalists are killing Ukrainian army officers who want to give up, and that looters armed by Kyiv (Kiev) are “rampaging” through the capital.
Major General Igor Konashenkov, The Russian defence ministry’s chief spokesman, admitted for the first time on Sunday that Russian forces have been killed and even taken prisoner during President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation… to de-militarise and de-Nazify Ukraine” — but insisted that “our losses are many times less” than those of the Ukrainian “nationalists” and regular forces.
Konashenkov claimed that “the Ukrainian Nazis” were mistreating Russian prisoners, accusing them of indulging in the same “tortures” as “the German Nazis and their henchmen-policemen in the Great Patriotic War,” as the Russians call the Second World War.
Konashenkov had alleged earlier the same day that nationalist militants had formed “barrage detachments” — a Soviet-era term for so-called anti-retreat forces — in the region of the separatist Luhansk People’s Republic to “stop the retreating units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and force them to continue resistance.”
The Russian officer claimed that these supposed barrier troops had “killed four officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” to prevent them from retreating, but did not provide evidence to substantiate his claim.
On Monday morning, Konashenkov gave another briefing in which he accused “the Kyiv regime” of using the civilian population in the Ukrainian capital “as a human shield for the nationalists” by first having persuaded them to stay in the city and then issuing a curfew and deploying “artillery units and military equipment in residential areas” — an accusation the Russians have repeated regularly since their offensive began.
He also denied Ukrainian claims that “Russian saboteurs” are operating in the capital and that Russian forces have blockaded the city, and claimed that the “real situation” is that “Armed gangs of looters, robbers and nationalists are rampaging in Kiev, who received weapons as a result of the criminal decision of the authorities to distribute them uncontrollably to the population.”
“All civilians in the city can freely leave the capital of Ukraine along the Kyiv-Vasilkov highway. This route is open and safe,” he said, claiming that “the armed forces of the Russian Federation strike only at military targets” and “Nothing threatens the civilian population.”
This assertion has been disputed by both the Ukrainian government and United Nations officials, with UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet estimating that at least 102 civilians have been killed mostly by “explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and air strikes” in comments quoted by Reuters.
“The real figures are, I fear, considerably higher,” she added.
In terms of military progress, Konashenkov claimed that Russia now has total air supremacy throughout Ukraine, and to have destroyed “314 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 57 multiple rocket launch systems, 121 field artillery and mortars, [and] 274 units of special military vehicles” over the course of the campaign, and significant advances by Russian and Russian-backed separatist forces.
The Ukrainian government, for its part, has painted a rather less rosy picture of the offensive’s progress, claiming that the country’s defenders have killed approximately 5,300 Russian personnel, downed 29 aircraft and 29 helicopters, and destroyed dozens of tanks and hundreds of armoured fighting vehicles, among other military matériel.
Content warning – graphic image:
This photograph taken on February 27th, 2022 shows a Russian Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) burning next to an unidentified soldier’s body during fight with the Ukrainian armed forces in Kharkiv (Kharkov). Ukrainian forces secured full control of Kharkiv on February 27th, 2022 following street fighting with Russian troops in the country’s second-biggest city, the local governor said. (Photo by SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images)