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  4. Russian troops outnumber Ukrainians 4 to one on a key battlefront, soldier says: 'The situation is deplorable'

Russian troops outnumber Ukrainians 4 to one on a key battlefront, soldier says: 'The situation is deplorable'

Thibault Spirlet   

Russian troops outnumber Ukrainians 4 to one on a key battlefront, soldier says: 'The situation is deplorable'
  • Ukrainian troops are trying to hold out on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine.
  • But Russian troops outnumber them four to one, a Ukrainian soldier told the Financial Times.

Russian troops have a significant advantage over Ukraine when it comes to manpower on the Dnipro River, a Ukrainian soldier said.

Vanya, a soldier in a reconnaissance unit fighting with marines on the eastern bank of the river, told the Financial Times that for every one of them, there were at least four Russians.

He added that Ukrainian forces were suffering heavy casualties, though he declined to give specific numbers.

Vanya said the "situation is deplorable."

The Dnipro River has become a focal point of the war in Ukraine in recent months, with Ukrainian officials claiming that their forces have established a foothold on the eastern bank.

To hold the left bank of the river, Ukrainian forces have been using first-person-view drones loaded with munitions to strike Russian vehicles, the UK Defense Ministry said last week.

One Russian military blogger quoted by the ministry said Ukrainians had destroyed almost 90% of Russian military hardware in one village on the eastern bank of the river.

But Ukrainian forces are also struggling.

The FT reported that Vanya's unit was positioned on marshy terrain and in shallow trenches prone to flooding or filled with rotting Russian corpses.

And their efforts to hold out on the eastern bank are also complicated by how difficult it is to carry heavy weapons across.

"Everything we take is what we can carry ourselves," Vanya told the newspaper, adding: "In a very rare case, I saw one heavy machine gun brought across."

Other Ukrainian soldiers have also reported struggling to make advances on the left bank of the river.

"It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It's impossible to move equipment there," Oleksiy, Ukrainian soldier, told The New York Times in December.

A Ukrainian soldier, identified only as Dmytro, said that he felt "tossed like a piece of meat to the wolves" when ordered to bridge the river and hold ground on the eastern bank.

Meanwhile, an unnamed soldier told the BBC that some of the marines sent to help defend recent Ukrainian advances on the Dnipro "can't even swim."

Ukrainian and Russian forces have maintained their "positional engagements" on the eastern bank of the river, the Institute for the Study of War said Thursday.

It added, citing Russian military bloggers, that a detachment of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade achieved a "partial" advance into Krynky but that Ukrainian forces continued to "firmly" hold positions within the settlement.



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