Russia's war chief - dubbed 'General Armageddon' has issued a deluded rant about his troops retreating in frontline Ukraine - claiming he is helping to save lives.
In a breathtaking outburst, Col Gen Sergei Surovikin made a string of ludicrous claims about Ukraine’s forces - bizarrely reversing accusations leveled against Moscow’s bungling invasion force.
As more Moscow cruise missiles and Iran-made drones slammed into civilian areas yesterday the Chechnya war veteran whined about Ukrainian resilience.
Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin slapped martial law on four regions of Ukraine he has illegally annexed in a nobbled and illegal poll.
Surovikin, 56, nicknamed 'Armageddon' because of his ruthless image brazenly accused Kyiv of deploying untrained troops, whilst Russia continued to deploy ex-cons and raw recruits.
Many of Moscow’s new 200,000 troops recently mobilised were press-ganged into heading to the frontline, dubbed the “meat grinder” because of the 67,000 already killed.
But Surovikin justified Russia’s mass withdrawal in the south’s Kherson, insisting: “We have a different strategy. We do not strive for high rates of advance, we protect each soldier and systematically grind the attacking enemy.
“Thus, not only our losses are minimised, but also the losses of the civilian population are significantly reduced.”
He failed to acknowledge the dead Russians left behind on the battlefield or those wounded and abandoned.
And he failed to mention the salvos of missiles hitting Ukraine’s civilian infrasturcture and population.
Yesterday Russian missile strike hit a major thermal power station in the city of Burshtyn in western Ukraine.
The latest salvo hit the coal-fired Burshtyn plant in the region of Ivano-Frankivsk that supplies electricity to three western regions and to five million consumers.
Local governor Svitlana Onyshchuk said: ““Our region experienced missile fire today. The Burshtyn thermal power station was hit, which caused a fire.” In the capital, air defences shot down incoming missiles, Kyiv’s mayor said.
Three people were injured in drone attacks in the northeast region of Chernyhiv, a senior official from the President’s office said.
In what could be an accurate description of the nightmare facing many Russian frontline soldiers Surovikin ranted about the plight of Ukraine’s forces, claiming: “The Ukrainian leadership dooms them to destruction. As a rule, such units have low morale.
“To prevent escaping from the front line, Ukrainian authorities, and the criminal regime use guard detachments of nationalists who shoot anyone who tries to leave the battlefield.”
Russia has deployed death squads to execute retreating forces.
He was talking as a third of all Ukrainians were facing blackouts and water stoppages as a result of Moscow’s brutal targeting of civilian infrastructure.
Last night former commander of British forces in Afghanistan Colonel Richard Kemp said: “Surovikin’s statements would be merely farcical if it weren’t for the large-scale depravity and tragedy of what is happening on the battlefield in Ukraine as a result of his military’s actions.
“So many Ukrainians are dying, civilians and troops, having stood up to this insane invasion - not to mention Russian men being sent to their deaths in a totally unjustified war.
“Everything he is accusing Ukraine of doing is actually being done by his commanders.”
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