Only 12 out of 100 survived: Russian soldier reveals true losses in Kharkiv region

The Guardian reported the information.

According to Andreev, his unit was completely defeated by the Ukrainian army in Vovchansk. Since Russian troops approached Kharkiv on May 9 and opened a new front, only 12 out of 100 soldiers have survived.

"They just chop us up. We are sent under machine guns, under drones in daylight, like meat. And commanders just shout ‘forward and forward,’" he said in a video first published by the Russian media outlet Astra.

The soldier said that as soon as his company arrived at the front, "during the first night, half the company immediately died."

For now, Russian state media and government officials continue to claim that their troops are still advancing toward Kharkiv. 

Even Putin himself claims that Russian losses are "of course several times less than on the Ukrainian side," but the Kremlin has to make great efforts to hide information like that provided by Andreev from the public.

At the same time, dozens of posts have begun to appear on social media in which Russians are looking for their relatives who went missing during the offensive on Kharkiv. And, surprisingly, there are a very large number of them, which indicates the staggeringly large losses that Russia continues to suffer.

As noted by the outlet, some of these relatives also talk about the very short preparation of the troops before the offensive, some claiming that the training lasted only a week.

• On June 16, Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of the Achilles battalion of the 92nd Separate Assault Brigade named after Ivan Sirko, explained on Espreso TV that, thanks to the permission to use Western weapons on Russian territory, the Ukrainian Defense Forces are seizing the tactical initiative in Kharkiv region.