A Tactical Disaster for Russia’s Military

[0] From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi.

[1] This is The Daily.

[2] Three months since Russia invaded Ukraine, one of the biggest surprises has been the inability of the Russian military to turn the tide of the war.

[3] Today, my colleague, Anton Trinovsky, on a clash that left hundreds of Russian soldiers dead and how its aftermath is raising doubts inside Russia, even among the military's most ardent supporters.

[4] It's Monday, May 23rd.

[5] So Anton, tell me about this most recent development you've been reporting on.

[6] So it's a Russian attempt to cross a river gone terribly wrong.

[7] The Russians earlier in May tried to cross the Dunnets River in eastern Ukraine in an effort to encircle Ukrainian troops that were stationed in that area.

[8] This is part of the battle for the Donbos, that eastern Ukrainian region you've been hearing so much about that the Russians are trying to take control of.

[9] So the Russian military sent hundreds of troops, dozens and dozens of tanks and other armored vehicles to the river to try to get across using these temporary pontoon bridges that the military is trained to set up.

[10] The problem was they were doing this in an area that was very much vulnerable to Ukrainian artillery fire.

[11] And so as these forces showed up at the river and paused to try to set up that temporary crossing, they became sitting ducks bunched up there along the water for the Ukrainian attack.

[12] And what the satellite images show us is that dozens of these.

[13] Russian military vehicles there were hit, were destroyed by the artillery fire.

[14] You can see tanks and other vehicles partially submerged in the river, burnt out and abandoned in the woods.

[15] This was really one of the most disastrous Russian tactical efforts that we know of in this whole war.

[16] What Western analysts are saying now is that more than 400 Russian troops were killed or injured.

[17] in this failed crossing, more than 80 military vehicles were lost.

[18] It really shows us the kind of tactical miscus that this Russian offensive continues to suffer from.

[19] Right.

[20] We've seen a lot of this throughout the course of the war.

[21] I mean, I'm thinking of the Moskva, the Russian warship that the Ukrainians sank in the Black Sea, and that huge Russian convoy coming down toward Kyiv that took such heavy losses.

[22] And all of this, you know, from an army that we all thought before the war was just incredibly formidable.

[23] What was the explanation for what went so wrong in this case?

[24] So we're now almost three months into the war, and the Russians have still not accomplished one of Putin's seemingly basic objectives here, which is to take control of the Donbass.

[25] And what a lot of Western officials and analysts are saying is that this disastrous river crossing shows how much pressure the Russian military command is under to make progress in that effort.

[26] You wouldn't do something this risky if you weren't under immense pressure from the top to show progress.

[27] And it's risky because you're inherently vulnerable when you're crossing a river?

[28] Exactly, exactly.

[29] And then maybe even more interestingly, actually, to me, watching all this unfold has been the reaction from the Russian supporters of the war, in particular from this stable of military bloggers, these reporters, many call them propagandists who are embedded with the troops, typically posting videos of Russian heroism and how horrible the Ukrainians are, they very rarely will criticize something that the Russians are doing.

[30] But after this river crossing failed so miserably, several of them came out and really started venting their frustration about the many different problems.

[31] the Russian campaign has faced.

[32] And what did they say about this battle, Anton?

[33] So they said that it was a total disaster and also that it shows the incompetence of the Russian forces.

[34] So I would say that's the biggest difference in the analysis here, sort of for Westerners looking at this, you see generals being under a lot of pressure.

[35] These Russians look at this and just see sheer incompetence.

[36] You know, for example, one of these guys who goes by Starsha Eddy on Telegram, the social messaging app, wrote how much of an idiot do you have to be to do this kind of thing after three months into the war to drive a big column of armored vehicles and then concentrate it at a point that's vulnerable to artillery fire.

[37] And then he goes on to write that actually this isn't idiocy, this is direct sabotage.

[38] These bloggers you're describing, do they work for the Russian military?

[39] Not officially, but they are pretty clearly part of that propaganda effort.

[40] So, you know, Russian propaganda is what you see on state television, but it's also what you read from these quasi -independent bloggers on telegram, where they have hundreds of thousands, in some cases, several million followers, posting several times a day, vividly describing the battle, but obviously in a very filtered kind of way.

[41] They're sort of pro -government Russian influencers in the military sphere.

[42] That's a, yes, a very good way to put it, very much influencers.

[43] And what were other influencers saying?

[44] Another one who goes by Vladlian Tatarski wrote that until we get the last name of the military genius who did this, and he answers for this publicly, no reforms in the army will actually happen.

[45] And then a third blogger, who actually has more than 2 million followers on Telegram, didn't just write a post about it.

[46] He recorded a whole five -minute video about his disgust with this failed river crossing and what it says about the state of the Russian war effort.

[47] His name is Yuri Podolakha.

[48] He started his video by saying, You know, I've been silent for a long time, he says, I've been silent for a long time, he says, I've been trying to reach out to different people for a long time, but I see that some people can only be reached by going public.

[49] You know, cabinets, of people, but I see that to some people And he says that this failed crossing of the Donets River was the last straw for him that caused him to now want to go public about all these problems that he's seeing in the Russian military.

[50] He's saying that...