Per the still-emerging data and analysis, the Battle of Kyiv was a disaster for Russian forces. Their elite VDV (Airborne Corps) was badly mauled in the heavy fighting around Antonov Int'l Airport northwest of the capital, which they attacked in the invasion's opening hours and eventually captured, but at tremendous cost in men and equipment - and they couldn't hold it.

According to open-source intelligence monitored in European media, the Russians attempted to fly in troops in before the airport perimeter was even secured, and Ukrainian defenders shot down seven fully loaded Russian transports one by one as each attempted to land while under fire.

Russian logistics were not prepared to support a prolonged engagement and not surprisingly, Russian troops soon began running short of fuel, food and even ammunition. The long Russian armored column east of Kyiv that the media kept referencing in the first couple weeks was not an attacking force as initially reported and feared.

Rather, the Russian tanks had run out of fuel, and its length was due to the fact that Russian commanders kept foolishly sending more armor down the same road only to be stalled in queue, which allowed the Ukrainians to pick it apart at their leisure once they realized the Russians weren't going anywhere. The Russians eventually abandoned their equipment and fled, and the Ukrainians captured over 200 tanks as a result that were in otherwise good condition.

Further, the unencrypted Russian communications network, babbling away as though ignorant of the fact that most Ukrainians are bilingual and also speak Russian, repeatedly gave away Russian positions to counterattacking Ukrainian forces; an estimated 9 BTGs were cut off at Irpin (west of Kyiv) and simply abandoned to their fate (with a resultant 5,000+ POWs) as Russians retreated back north. The Russian army lost a quarter of its tanks and armored personnel carriers in the engagement.

Lesser known but just as important to the current situation on the ground is the apparent Russian military disaster in the south during the attempt to take Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odessa.

As the Russians attempted to encircle the city of Mykolaiv from the east and north, an entire armored corps was completely shattered by Ukrainian civil guard forces (not regular army) defending the town of Voznesensk, which exposed the Russian west flank to counterattack.

The Russian defeat at Mykolaiv resulted in an estimated loss of 70% of their personnel. The remnants were pursued by the Ukrainians all the way back to the Russian-occupied city of Kherson.

The following maps, prepared by military analyst Nathan Ruser, show the remarkable unfolding of the Russians' debacle in Ukraine:

• MAP 1 depicts the situation on the ground as of April 1, as Ukrainian forces began their counterattack at Kyiv and cut off Russian units near in and around Irpin. Russian-controlled areas are in red, and the territory under Ukrainian government control is in blue.

• MAP 2 depicts the situation on the ground as of April 3, and shows the clearly deteriorating Russian position in the north as Ukrainian forces press their counterattack and drive the Russians away from Kyiv. the next day, the Kremlin announced it was "withdrawing" its forces; in reality, they were routed.

• MAP 3 depicts the situation on the ground as of April 5, with the counterattacking Ukrainian columns reaching the Belarus border and moving eastward to re-establish control over the main highway to Kharkiv in the east.

• MAP 4 depicts the situation on the ground as of April 6, and shows the furthest extent of Russian penetration into Ukraine as of March 31. as well as the subsequent collapse of the Russian offensives at Kyiv (north) and Mykolaiv (south), which is shown in yellow.

• MAP 5 depicts the situation on the ground as of April 11, with Ukrainian forces re-establishing control in the north.

• MAP 6 depicts the situation on the ground as of yesterday, April 18, as Russian reinforcements arrive in eastern and southern Ukraine and Ukraininan forces launch a counteroffensive to drive the Russians back from Kharkiv.

• MAP 7 depicts the situation at present and shows how effective the Ukrainian counteroffensive over the last 18 days has been in removing the immediate Russian threats on the ground to Kyiv and Odessa.

Ukraine Scanning Faces of Dead Russian Soldiers
April 15, 2022 at 11:03 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 46 Comments

"Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since Moscow's invasion began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families in what may be one of the most gruesome applications of the technology to date," the Washington Post reports.

"The country's IT Army, a volunteer force of hackers and activists that takes its direction from the Ukrainian government, says it has used those identifications to inform the families of the deaths of 582 Russians, including by sending them photos of the abandoned corpses."