KILL LIST: Putin’s Losses Mount With NINE Commanders Among ‘12,000 Killed’ as Kremlin official calls invasion A ‘Clusterf***’
NINE of Vladimir Putin’s military commanders have now been killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
They are among the 12,000 Russian troops Ukraine now claims it has killed, as one Kremlin official has reportedly described the campaign to subdue its neighbour as a “clusterf***”.
The latest senior commander to die is Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, who was killed in fighting outside Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv.
Gerasimov was awarded a medal for “capturing” the disputed province of Crimea in 2014, and also received medals after leading troops in Syria and in the second Chechen war.
Three other top commanders have were killed in recent fighting in Ukraine.
Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Safronov, who led a Marine brigade, died along with Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov and Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky, who led air assault troops.
Safronov and Glebov were killed when Ukrainian forces have recaptured the city of Chuhuiv, while Zizevsky was killed at in the south of Ukraine.
Their deaths come after those of other senior Russian commanders, including two other generals.
Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky was killed by a Ukrainian sniper during the fighting for Hostomel Airfield about 30 miles outside the capital Kyiv.
And General Magomed Tushaev died when his Chechen special forces column, including 56 tanks, was obliterated near Hostomel, north-east of the city.
The Chechen soldiers are known as “hunters” and each of them was reportedly given a pack of cards with senior Ukrainian officials that Moscow wants dead.
Also among the Russian dead is warlord Vladimir Zhonga who led the Sparta Battalion, a Neo-Nazi military unit that has the Kremlin’s backing.
The group is behind a wave of deadly attacks against Ukrainian troops and has been waging war in the Donbass region since hostilities broke out eight years ago.
Two other unnamed Russian senior commanders have also been killed in the fighting.
Kremlin officials have allegedly made “apocalyptic” predictions about the conflict in Ukraine, describing the invasion on February 24 as a “mistake”.
They were “carefully enunciating the word clusterf***” when describing the invasion, Business Insider reports.
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After the latest Russian setback, Ukrainian colonel Lieutenant General Serhiy Shaptala said his troops had seized Chuhuiv, killing large numbers of Putin’s men.
“In the course of hostilities, the city of Chuhuiv was liberated,” the General Staff said on Facebook.
“The occupiers suffered heavy losses in personnel and equipment.”
Footage from the scene shows a “Z” marked military vehicle with the Ukrainian flag while chanting can be heard.
Chuhuiv, a small city of 30,000 people 22 miles southeast of Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, was one of the first taken by the Russians.
A week ago, a young boy was killed in the city after heavy shelling struck an apartment block.
The image of a woman with a heavily-bandaged and bleeding face following the shelling in Chuhuiv became one of the defining images of the conflict so far.
