Ukrainian military officials have acknowledged their positions in Krynky had been “completely destroyed”, but denied wider reports the country’s forces have been withdrawn from the area.
The cross-river raid was widely seen as a desperate effort by Ukrainian politicians to demonstrate to Kyiv’s Western backers that its forces could make progress at the backend of the failed counter-offensive in the summer of 2023.
Soldiers taking part in the incursion, which requires a 30 to 60-minute boat journey through open water under the fire of Russian drones, have previously described it as being “tossed like a piece of meat to the wolves”.
And if they aren’t killed before reaching the riverbank the conditions only worsened for the Ukrainian marines.
“There were Russians to the right and left of us, and Russians in front of us. Behind us, there was water. There was nowhere to fall back to.” Vasyl, a soldier from Ukraine’s 37th marine brigade, told Slidstvo.
Ukraine’s Krynky commander sacked
He spent 72 days in Krynky between Dec 2 2023 and Valentine’s Day this year.
“If we had a wounded soldier, we immediately reported it so that a boat could come at night. Many boats couldn’t come, it happened that guys were lying with their limbs severed for 10 days, and the boats couldn’t come to us,” he added.
The operation in Krynky had been commanded by General Yuriy Sodol, who was sacked last month following allegations that his tactics had “killed more Ukrainian soldiers than any Russian general”.
Ukraine rarely makes public its casualty figures, but the Slidstvo report has triggered wide-scale anger among Ukrainians and prompted allegations that commanders are reckless with the lives of their men.
Unconfirmed open-source reports claim that Ukraine had lost 58 pieces of equipment in the mission compared to Russia’s 271.
But Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military expert, argued that the operation in the tiny fishing village had helped save lives elsewhere by preventing Russian troops from fighting in other offensive missions.
“Each life that was lost there, saved dozens of other lives on other fronts,” he said.