MOSCOW, July 5. /TASS/. Cases of mass desertion and refusals to go to "meat grinder" assaults are being registered in the Ukrainian armed forces, DPR Head’s Advisor Yan Gagin said Wednesday.

"I would like to tell about the trend for mass desertion and refusals to go ‘meat grinder’ assaults. Here is a fresh example. Ukraine’s 28th Mechanized brigade, 2nd battalion, 4th group failed to engage in an assault entirely, claiming that all vehicles experienced a failure. Meaning both armored combat vehicles, armored personnel carriers, including US-made ones. We learned about from intercepted radio communications, this is internal Ukrainian information. […] In my opinion, this is just sabotage, [committed] out of fear to get into a meat grinder," he said on Russian TV.

According to Gagin, Ukrainian forces’ increasingly frequent "meat grinder" assaults are connected to the upcoming NATO summit and Kiev’s desire to present tangible results before it begins.

"Ukrainian servicemen begin to realize that they are simply being used to plug holes. The thing is, about 15% of servicemen come out alive from these ‘meat grinder’ assaults, as the Ukrainians themselves call them - sometimes even less, because they advance at already targeted positions, which were assaulted by their killed predecessors mere hours ago," Gagin explained.

Despite that, the Ukrainian command continue throwing forces into places where most of servicemen and vehicles perish, he concluded.