Fighting continues in western Donetsk suburbs
2015-06-06
Posted by: badanov
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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Public disputes over casualty figures for the battle of Marinka from last Wednesday have arisen as the president of Donetsk claims Ukrainian dead to be as high as 400, according to Russian language news accounts.
Officially, the battle for Marinka was concluded Wednesday, but indications from Russian military bloggers and analysts, as well as from rebel media, are that the fighting for Marinka continues.
Friday Donetsk president Aleksandr Zakharchenko claimed that battle losses for Ukrainians in the eight hour fight amounted to 400 dead and more than 1,000 wounded, numbers which are comparable to the losses by the Germans and the Russian Red Army in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, casualty numbers which are considered exaggerated, even by Russian military journalists.
Russian military analyst Boris Rozhin said Ukrainian losses were in the range of 200 killed in action (KIA).
Previous reports in Ukrainian news sources had claimed that Marinka was still held by Ukrainian forces, and that rebel forces which has taken the town had withdrawn following a rebel armored counterattack.
Zakharchenko said in remarks on Friday that rebel forces had in fact taken Marinka, the center of the villages and control a key crossroads at Krasnogorovka, and had destroyed 60 pieces of Ukrainian military equipment, including four artillery batteries.
However, Ukrainian president Piotr Poroshenko was quoted Friday as saying Marinka was still in Ukrainian hands.
Prisoners taken by rebel forces from the Ukrainian 28th Mechanized Brigade, the main Ukrainian units deployed to Marinka, have said in rebel sponsored press conferences that the losses by the Ukrainian were massive. Other Russian language reports say that hospitals which serve the Ukrainian effort against the Donbas rebels are said to be overflowing with wounded evacuated since Wednesday.
Thursday, rebel media said that Ukrainian artillery was fired on several regions in western Donetsk including in residential areas.
Chris Covert writes about foreign military issues for Rantburg.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com and on Twitter. You can read past articles about the 2014 war in southeastern Ukraina by clicking here.
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