MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. The 57th and 34th Brigades of the Ukrainian armed forces have lost about 20 battalions near Vilcha in the Kharkov Region over the past two years while attempting to attack Russia’s Belgorod and Rostov Regions, military expert Vitaly Kiselev reported.
According to him, after liberating Volchansk, Russian troops continued to advance south of the city - toward Liman and Vilcha in the Kharkov Region.
"Liman and Vilcha are important areas. From here, the enemy attempted to counterattack toward both Belgorod and the Rostov Region, launching a large number of drones, thus signaling that we were about to reach the Ukrainian-Russian border. However, they failed again. And over the past few years, units such as the 57th Brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces and the 34th [Brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces] have lost nearly 10 battalions of personnel here. This testifies to the incompetence of the defense, incompetence of the Ukrainian armed forces command - they're simply sending people to the slaughter," he said on the Soloviev Live TV channel.
Kiselev added that, despite heavy losses and massive, combined attacks by the Russian army, the aforementioned Ukrainian army brigades have "a very large number of soldiers that go AWOL" - as Ukrainian servicemen have been deserting increasingly frequently.
On December 22, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the liberation of the village of Vilcha in the Kharkov Region. "Battlegroup North units gained control of the settlement of Vilcha in the Kharkov Region through active operations," the ministry said in a statement.