Ukraine Hits Russian Command Post in Kherson, Two Generals Killed – The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s Chief Intelligence Directorate claimed in a released statement that they conducted a strike on a Russian command post in the southern region of Kherson that resulted in the death of two Russian generals and the wounding of another.
Ukraine claimed that Yakov Rezantsev, the commanding general of the 49th Combined Arms Army was reportedly among the dead. The Russian military had no comment on this action.
“On April 22, 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine struck a devastating blow at a forward command post of the 49th Combined Arms Army of Russian occupation troops located a short distance from the battle line in the Kherson region,” the statement said. “The result: The Field Control Point of the 49th Combined Arms Army was destroyed. Two occupier generals were eliminated, and one was seriously wounded and evacuated in critical condition.”
That statement was confirmed by presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych who said during an interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center when it came under attack. But he didn’t elaborate on any casualties.
“Their fate is unknown, but I think it must be miserable,” Arestovych said.
During the early stages of the Russian invasion, the Black Sea port city of Kherson was the first city to fall as Russia was trying to use it as a launching point to sweep into Odesa. Kherson is an important cog in the already stretched thin logistical lifeline to the Crimea to the south. The Russian military is using the city as a rail link allowing them to move artillery and heavy equipment into the region.
The Russian advance on Odesa has been stopped by increased Ukrainian resistance around the city of Mykolaiv, which has been heavily shelled by the Russians, especially in the civilian areas. Fierce counterattacks pushed the Russian troops back in the retaking of several smaller villages in heavy fighting.
Why Are So Many Russian Generals Being Killed In Ukraine
The heavy fighting in Ukraine has taken a heavy toll on Russian troop formations as well as with their general officers. If this latest claim by the Ukrainians is true, that would push the number of Russian generals killed in two months of combat to 10.
In contrast, during the American 20 years in Afghanistan, only one general was killed and that was from an inside “green on blue” attack by an Afghan soldier who was ostensibly an ally.
So, why are so many Russian generals dying? The answer has several factors that are the cause.
The first is the lack of junior leadership which is and has always been a glaring lack in both the Soviet and Russian militaries. In the West and especially in the US, the non-commissioned officers (NCOs) are the backbone of the Army.
NCOs in the Western militaries have the authority and the duty to make critical decisions at the tactical level during combat operations. The Soviet/Russian system is a top-down driven level of leadership where senior officers keep junior officers in perpetual fear so that there is no independent thinking or decision making. The NCOs as we have in the West are by and large non-existent in the Russian military.
Loyalty, Not Expierence
Senior leadership under the Putin regime follows the same principle as in the Soviet model that he so passionately pines for. Senior leaders are chosen and put into positions of power not on their leadership attributes, but on their loyalty to Putin. This goes all the way to the top of the food chain. Putin chose Sergei Shoigu as the Russian Defense Minister and he had no military experience. His biggest qualification is his unquestioned loyalty to Putin.
This lack of leadership at the junior levels has forced Russian generals to move to the front of advances and take an active role in operations that would be handled by officers of much lesser rank in the West. This has the effect of hindering the overall plan as in the West, general officers would be farther behind the front and able to see the entire tactical situation and be better able to allocate troops and resources to where they are most needed.
This lack of leadership is apparent in the utter lack of the understanding of the combined arms approach that in the West is practiced to a fine art. Russian armored formations have no coordination with air assets and have run forward of artillery support while sticking to the roads. This has led to horrendous casualties.
Due to the rampant corruption, the Russian military has only a fraction of the Azart encrypted radios that protect their communications. Many Russian commanders are then having to resort to commercial hand-held radios and even unencrypted cell phones which makes them easy prey to jamming and pinpointing for strikes by artillery.
In a report in Foreign Policy, a European diplomat said that Russian commanders aren’t getting enough communications from the front forcing them forward. “They’re having to go to the front line to make things happen, which is putting them at much greater risk than you would normally see.”
Another factor is the invaluable lessons learned factor of warfare. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, the Ukrainian military was taught a painful lesson, they surrounded their command posts with tanks and troops making them easy targets for Russian jamming and artillery strikes. They were sighted by Russian surveillance drones and were hit hard. The Ukrainians learned from this lesson. The Russians forgot about it. And are now paying for it.
Since the start of the war, no fewer than 31 Russian command posts have been hit and destroyed by Ukrainian air and artillery strikes.
How the Ukrainians are doing so well at locating the Russian command posts may be a combination of them using unencrypted cell phones as well as getting shared intelligence from Western militaries. The post in Forbes mentioned that a British Royal Air Force RC-135 signals-intelligence aircraft was flying over the Black Sea, only about 150 miles from Kherson, around the time of the attack on the 49th CAA headquarters. The British could have located the command post and shared it with the Ukrainians, although that is just conjecture.
Ukrainian tank firing. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Tu-22M3M from the Russian Air Force.
However, the Russians are paying a heavy price for their refusal to heed the bloody lessons that they made the Ukrainians pay for eight years ago. And that is being paid back to them in spades during the invasion. And it isn’t likely to change soon.
Steve Balestrieri is a 1945 National Security Columnist. He has served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer before injuries forced his early separation. In addition to writing for 19fortyfive.com, he has covered the NFL for PatsFans.com for more than 10 years and his work was regularly featured in the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle and Grafton News newspapers in Massachusetts.
Ben Colder
April 24, 2022 at 12:43 pm
When the Russian war of aggression started the fake news was wetting their pants as to how quick the Russian sons of bitches was going to over run Ukraine now they are so worried about the Russian bastards getting their communist asses whipped .Rather telling if you ask me of course no one asked me I am telling them anyway.
Jesus
April 25, 2022 at 1:32 pm
Little benny-putin, are u dumb or insane or 12?
THE news was dead on… not fake… traditional news has standards and has checks.. only TRUMPEE- PUTIN news is pervasive in your FOX idiots and your russian boys…
FACT was that nobody knew how this EVIL invasion was going to unfold and the sheer numbers of Russian soldiers and firepower meant that the Ukrainian forces would be over run… logical ASSERTIONS if not facts…within the “fog of war” (unknowns) and military experience parameters…
However the NEWS ALWAYS pointed out that in war THERE IS NO CERTAINTY AND MANY TIMES THE UNEXPECTED FACTORS RADICALLY AFFECT THE OUTCOMES…
SO STOP BEING A RIDICULOUS PUTIN CLOWN OF PUKE
Zelda555
July 27, 2022 at 10:06 am
I agree with you wholeheartedly. There is a lot of ignorant people around who have not a clue.
Alex
April 24, 2022 at 2:22 pm
Hysteria Bandera Nazis. The inability to refute the facts of Russia about the atrocities of Bandera Nazis. The lies of the Anglo-Saxon media say one thing: Nazism in Ukraine is suffering a complete collapse.
mcswell
April 24, 2022 at 4:04 pm
Alex, “Nazism” in Ukraine suffered a complete collapse in 1944, and never came back. Oct 28 (1944) is now celebrated as the “anniversary of the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis”.
CK
April 24, 2022 at 5:06 pm
I wouldn’t even bother mcswell, Alex lives in another world.
Anything he disagrees with is hysteria, anyone he doesn’t like are bandera nazis. The poor sod couldn’t tell duplicity if Sveta told him she’d be late from work again.
The guy is utterly deluded.
mcswell
April 25, 2022 at 12:14 am
I know, I just like to tweak him. It’s fun. See my next post…
mcswell
April 25, 2022 at 12:15 am
I know, I just like to tweak him. It’s fun. See my next post…
mcswell
April 25, 2022 at 12:16 am
Nuts, this double posting is getting to me. I post, nothing shows up, I refresh the page to make sure…still nothing. Then I go to post s.t. new, and there are *two* of my posts.
CK
April 25, 2022 at 7:40 am
Happens to me too. Very irritating!
Alex
April 25, 2022 at 1:41 am
US Congressman Darrell Issa predicted the imminent collapse of the Ukrainian government in connection with the current situation in the country.
“Fortunately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not present at our secret briefings, where it has been repeatedly said that he has no chance,” he said.
The congressman also added that he considers the US sanctions against Russia “unreasonable”.
Zelensky said that he had agreed with US President Joe Biden on further support for Ukraine’s defense capability and new sanctions against the Russian Federation.
Biden said more than 12,000 US troops have been sent to Russia’s borders. He also noted that the United States will respond to any step of the Russian Federation towards NATO, even if it leads to a world war.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, during a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General António Guterres, noted that the situation in Ukraine was aggravated by Washington and Western countries. According to the head of the defense department, instead of “forcing the Kyiv regime to stop the genocide against the population of the southeast of their country, they began to pump weapons and ammunition into Ukraine,” thus preparing it to resolve the conflict by force.
Western countries, including the United States, began to impose sanctions in response to the Russian-led operation to protect the Donbass, which began on February 24. The situation in the region escalated in mid-February due to shelling by the Ukrainian military. The authorities of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics announced the evacuation of residents to the Russian Federation, and also turned to Moscow for help. On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree recognizing the independence of the DPR and LPR and promised to support the republics.
Since 2014, Kyiv has been conducting an operation against the inhabitants of Donbass, who refused to recognize the new government in Ukraine. For 8 years in a row, Kyiv tortured and killed civilians in Donbass.
Bryony Fearn
April 25, 2022 at 8:03 am
Alex, you’re peddling Putin’s propaganda. Putin poisoned Yushchenko to replace with Yanukovych which lead to the 2012 orange revolution and later the Euromaidan protests in 2014 because the Ukrainian population largely rejected Putin’s puppet – they wanted to control their own destinies and not to be controlled by Putin. Putin’s flipped the script, spent 8 years cooking up stories around the Donbas region which included a bungled shooting down of a domestic airliner but pointing the finger elsewhere, developing the victim narrative then pointing at NATO and the west as justification for his recent, despicable and inhuman aggression and you’ve bought it. He and his regime have been flooding social media since that time with fake shit and propaganda for 8 yrs. He played the long game and people like you have helped with your ignorance and lack of real knowledge. Putin is part of a corporate criminal elite, with tendrils around the world, extending itself into mafia/mobster style networks who masquerade as governments while fleecing the general population. What he accuses others of, he is guilty of. And yes, America has an appalling history of interference and regime change in other countries also. That does not justify or nullify what Putin is doing. Innocent men, women and children, babies even, are dying. Get a grip
mcswell
April 25, 2022 at 3:03 pm
Alex, you cannot get your facts straight. Issa did NOT predict the imminent collapse of the Ukrainian government. On the contrary, he called for the US administration to do more to help the Ukrainians, in part by establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. And if he thinks the current sanctions against Russia are “unreasonable”, as you claim, he thinks it’s because we should be doing more, not less, to stop Putin and his madness.
Him
April 25, 2022 at 2:11 am
I would add to mcswell’s statement:
“Nazism” in Ukraine suffered a complete collapse in 1944”
But, Nazi-behaviour and Nazi-traits in Russia never went away. At the start of WW2, Russia was allied with Nazi Germany. In other words, the Russian way of thinking was the same as Nazi Germany.
But because Germany attacked Russia, it caused Russia to swap sides, so it came out on the winning side. This meant Russia did not need to repent for starting WW2 with the Nazis. Russia did not change its way of thinking.
Our Komrade Alex-troll is an example of a person who has grown up in a Nazi-thinking society, and his way of thinking is totally different from the West. He accuses others of being Nazis, and yet, historically the line of Nazi heritage goes from the Soviet-Hitler alliance of his great or grandfather’s time to modern Russia. What you see now in Russia is the same as conditions under Nazi Germany.
It is a tactic of Totalitarian regimes, rooted in deception, that they accuse the other side of what they are doing. So when a Russian accuses others of being Nazis, the Russians themselves are actually the ones behaving like Nazis.
We need to get Alex’s address and send him a brown shirt, because if he had been alive in 1935, he would have been among the young people mindlessly following his Totalitarian government, doing what he is told.
Alex
April 25, 2022 at 3:17 am
Little Bandera Nazi, you run after me on all topics, only showing everyone that you are a stupid, beggar, uneducated person who hides behind dozens of nicknames and behind your mother’s skirt. Have you noticed that I don’t mostly read or reply to you? I’m not interested in your lies, propaganda and Nazi malice. I hope your ass will blaze even more from the truth, and then it will burn in a hellish cauldron next to your “dad” Bandera.
Bandera: who they are – then and now.
Today, on television and on the Internet, a lot of news is devoted to Ukraine. In the news stories, the word “Bandera” is heard every now and then.
Who are they and what are they doing in Ukraine? If you look for the answer on your own, without the help of knowledgeable people, then you can stumble upon completely incorrect descriptions of these people. To answer this question, you have to go back in time.
Where did Bandera come from?
The collective name “Bandera” was formed from the name of one of the leaders who actively promoted Ukrainian nationalism. Stepan Bandera wanted to liberate his nation from “non-Ukrainians” so much that he brutally cracked down on anyone who had other roots. The main justification for him was that he was striving to gain complete freedom and independence of the country from the influence of other states and peoples as soon as possible.
Accordingly, those who share Bandera’s ideology and want to cleanse Ukraine of ethnically “unclean” are called Bandera people today. Banderaism appeared during the Great Patriotic War, but now it is experiencing a second revival.
The life of Stepan Bandera.
Bandera himself was not a full-blooded Ukrainian. He was born in the family of a priest who had Greek roots. The father taught the children a lot, tried to convey his worldview to them. Perhaps then Stepan absorbed the first portion of nationalism from his father, which later grew into hatred. In addition, the First World War also left an indelible mark on the psyche of a still very young man.
While still a high school student, Bandera began to show nationalist inclinations. He led the youth movement in Western Ukraine, trying by any means to achieve its independence. It is worth noting that Bandera was not afraid to use even the most dangerous means – for example, terrorism.
As a senior student, Bandera joined the Ukrainian military organization, in which he continued his activities even after graduation from the educational institution. In some cities, especially in Lviv, Stepan was considered an idol. It was there that the OUN, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, was created. A special Bandera uniform was even developed.
In those days, the nationalists devoted a lot of effort to the fight against their political opponents, so Bandera already had several political victims. For one of these crimes, the killer was sentenced to death, but then the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment – but he did not even manage to serve this term. During the German occupation of Poland, all nationalists were released, including Bandera. It happened in 1939, just at the beginning of the Second World War.
Bandera considered the Soviet Union the main enemy of the people of Ukraine. But at the same time, he believed that Germany would not help Ukrainian nationalists achieve independence. In fact, this is what happened: in 1941, Stepan was taken into custody in Germany, since the Nazis had completely different plans for Ukraine. He spent 3 years in prison.
After his release, Bandera remained to live in Nazi Germany and created a foreign branch of the OUN. His activities were very inconspicuous, he tried not to attract attention and went around with guards until the end of his life. However, he still failed to avoid the assassination attempt: in 1959 he was killed by a KGB agent B. Stashinsky.
After his death, Bandera left a family. His followers retained faith in their leader and loyalty to their ideology, adding to it their cruel innovations. They committed many more murders on the territory of Ukraine and Belarus, hiding behind the ideas of Bandera.
Activities during World War II and after
While the Bandera leader was in Germany, his followers were active on the territory of Ukraine and fought first against the Polish occupation, and then switched to the Red Army and Soviet power. It was then that the UPA was created – the “Ukrainian rebel army”, whose enemies were everyone who was not a Ukrainian. All “superfluous” had to be eliminated by any means.
One of the ardent fans of this doctrine was Roman Shukhevych. Under his leadership, many families of Polish origin were killed. These times are remembered as the bloodiest in the history of the region. The Belarusian village of Khatyn was simply wiped off the face of the earth. People of all ages were not just killed, but tortured before being dealt a fatal blow.
Confrontation.
Undoubtedly, the nationalist movement also had its enemies. After all, Bandera did not just kill people of other nationalities. It came to a terrible absurdity: entire families were slaughtered if they were loyal to the Russians and did not support the ideology of the radicals. People lived in fear, and it was impossible to defend themselves. At that time, the Soviet Union sent NKGB and NKVD workers to Ukraine. Work was carried out with the population, “destruction squads” were created. Everyone who wanted to help in the elimination of bandit formations took part in the battles. In the end, the good turned white: the last underground groups of the OUN-UPA were mercilessly defeated in the mid-fifties. Only then did the attacks on civilians stop.
Who are Bandera in Ukraine today.
In modern Ukraine, the Bandera movement began to revive again. Young people are most exposed to this radical ideology. However, not everyone is well acquainted with history and does not know how much trouble this too ardent nationalism brought to the country where today’s Bandera people live. The older generation does not particularly support them and regrets that they did not once exterminate all the followers of Bandera to the last.
Today in Ukraine, the leader’s birthday is celebrated brightly: parades are gathered, participants carry portraits of the leaders of the movement and light torches. The holiday rolls around the city, but not all residents like fanaticism towards Stepan Bandera and the red and black flag of Bandera.
Today’s Bandera people are the most active fighters for the freedom of Ukraine and ardent opponents of the Russians. If you enter the query “Bandera photo” on the Internet, you can see that in appearance they are mostly unremarkable young people, except that they wear national symbols. Red and black banners, national flags are unfurled at parades, banners with slogans are carried. Stepan Bandera is their main idol, monuments are erected to him, songs are dedicated to him.
However, not all Ukrainians should be attributed to this direction. Most residents of the country are not at all happy with what is happening inside Ukraine. Fortunately, the followers of Bandera in Ukraine can be found mainly in the west of the country, but it is worth remembering that mostly non-Ukrainians live there. The words of the current deputy of Ukraine: “Ukrainians and other peoples in the west of the country live in Ukraine.”
One cannot but agree with him, because it was from the west of Ukraine that the Bandera Nazis went to kill Ukrainians in the east of Ukraine. Today there are many terrible stories about how Bandera atrocities in Ukraine, their cruel torture and murder of children and women did not leave any journalist indifferent. There is a lot of evidence and after a special military operation they will be made public. The whole world will be horrified who NATO countries helped to kill Ukrainians.
CK
April 25, 2022 at 7:44 am
I’m not reading all that. I’m happy for you though! Or sorry it happened.
Alex, at this point, it’s sport to me. I like seeing the innovative ways your mind squirms and twists trying to justify the undeniable. It’s like going to a zoo. It’s a spectacle that utterly amuses me.
Poor you, so persecuted. These barbs (hiding under my mother’s skirt) really Alex, you wound me so deeply. What next? I am rubber, you are glue?
You need to improve your act my friend. This is well out of your league. We could put floaties on your arms while you sit in a puddle and you’d still sink.
Kinda like the Moskva, now that I think about it.
Alex
April 25, 2022 at 10:18 am
There is the Donetsk People’s Republic. There is the Luhansk People’s Republic. Kherson applied to Russia for a referendum to establish the Kherson People’s Republic. God bless the Ukrainians of Donbass!
CK
April 25, 2022 at 10:55 am
Yes Alex, and Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania also re-applied to join the Russian Federation. In this reality, Putin has conquered his hemorrhoids, and you and Sveta live happily ever after.
It’s nice to sit back and daydream, isn’t it? ?
Alex
April 26, 2022 at 2:01 am
Slowly, in order to avoid unnecessary casualties, but confidently and kilometer after kilometer, the people’s militia of Donbass liberates Ukraine from Bandera Nazis. And all because this is the “whole world” with the Ukrainian regime:
The West failed to turn much of the world against Russia after the military operation in Ukraine began, columnist Howard French wrote in an article for Foreign Policy magazine.
According to him, many states did not support sanctions against Moscow, including such large countries as India and China.
“In fact, when counting the population of these countries, it becomes clear that the states representing the majority of humanity have not taken a position in this conflict, seeing in it the familiar echoes of the former rivalry between East and West,” said French.
According to the observer, the international political system that took shape at the beginning of the twentieth century from the very beginning gave the countries of the “third world” the status of second-class states. As an example, he cited the colonization of Africa by European countries.
“It was the work of the enslaved millions of people who grew sugar and cotton in huge quantities, cleared the land and did all other unpaid work that made the American colonies profitable for Europe, and the so-called “Old World” new and rich,” the author emphasized.
French urged not to ignore the heightened sense of justice among the former colonized peoples.
CK
April 26, 2022 at 6:57 am
Oh, so now “slow” progress is to avoid casualties? Man, you must have been getting lessons, your jokes only get better and better!
Rob
April 27, 2022 at 10:37 am
The only Nazis in the Ukraine are the Wagner mercenaries that Putin brought in to fight because the Russian Military is beyond substandard. Lots of Nazi tattoos, nicknames, memorabilia, and iconography surrounding the Wagner merc. So if the Ukraine has a Nazi problem, it’s because Putin brought it with him to the fight. I can’t wait to see the next cut and paste that Alexei Bot drops on us. Maybe the FSB can come up with something more original this time because the Nazi stuff is old and tired at this point. And no one is buying that.
Alex
April 29, 2022 at 9:17 am
If someone wants to know the truth about the civil war in the Donbass, about all the atrocities of the Bandera clean-ups and why Russia was forced to intervene, then it is better to watch films by independent journalists. There are already many such journalists who fight for truth and freedom. For example, a documentary by the German journalist Wilhelm Domcke-Schulz.
A documentary film about the war crimes of the Bandera Nazis during the period of Russia’s special military operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine is in production. It will be a real information bomb, where the war crimes of Bandera Nazis will be shown and proved.
The documentary “Remember Odessa” tells how the Bandera Nazis burned Ukrainians alive and other heinous war crimes.
The documentary “To Live and Die in Donbass” tries to fill this gaping information gap in the West. He looks into the tormented soul of the inhabitants of Donbass, who really want only one thing – to live self-determining according to their own rules and values. Not submitting to foreign forces and ideologies.
In the east of Ukraine, in the Donbass, a war has been raging since the beginning of 2014. A civil war that claimed more than 15,000 lives over the years, including several hundred children. They had to die, because the national-fascist coup government in Kyiv, funded by the West, trained and militarily heavily armed, would not tolerate any resistance to their illegitimate rule, no matter the cost.
Therefore, in April 2014, the putschists deployed the Ukrainian army, supported by dozens of right-wing extremist volunteer battalions, and have since bombed city centers, residential areas, schools, hospitals and infrastructure, killing civilians.
This perennial crime has gone completely unnoticed by the Western public. Politicians and the media avoid this topic and reports about how the devil pours holy water. Because a public discussion about the crimes of the Ukrainian regime would reveal only one thing – with what mass murderers and terrorists the so-called “west of values” in Ukraine has a common language, if only to defend their goals and interests.
Lend-lease is a commodity loan, and not cheap: for all the ammunition, equipment and food supplied by the United States, many future generations of Ukrainian citizens will pay. Zelensky is driving the country into a debt hole.
CK
April 29, 2022 at 1:47 pm
Ah, I see your tactic. You add a little shitty first paragraph so it doesn’t detect your duplicate post. Is this what it has come to now, you just posting the same exact post 2, 3, 4, 5 times per article?
Wow, did they run out of paper in Russia, Alex? You guys can’t print new material? Literally using the same lines, over and over again, and now in duplicate in every post!
Are you so defeated you can’t even come up with anything new? How sad. Now the idiot is talking about lend-lease at the end of his post, because he literally just copy + pasted it from another thread, with zero relevance to this one.
Here’s a reminder:
If someone wanted to know the truth about anything in Ukraine Alex, the last person they would go to is you.
Paragraphs and paragraphs of bollocks, dubious claims about “independent journalists”, random documentarians, conspiracy theorists, deluded claims that of course, have no backup, lie after lie after lie.
Classical Kremlin troll approach. Just flood the internet, the comments, the media, with tosh, doesn’t matter what it is, just make sure you write some old nonsense. Make sure to say the claim is supported by some dude in Germany, France, the states. If it’s a “documentary” (usually from youtube) then the better.
Anything that victimises Russia, always the victim, always the bullied, never the problem. It’s always the Nazis. It’s always some pseudo-historical point.
Anyone that has had the misfortune to study your “tactics” sees the forest for the trees, the pattern of lies, disinformation, blanketing of random claims, deflection, obfuscation, and other words beyond your vocabulary.
It’s hopeless Alex. Your lies are as short as your intellect. What a pathetic job, to sit in your government shed, spreading your pathetic, government lies.
A pathetic job for a truly pathetic man. A better match could not be made in heaven.