The following is a machine translation of a BBC Russia report
The BBC has learned that elite Russian military formations took part in the operation for the unsuccessful defense of the Estuary, and they suffered serious losses. At least nine people were killed and one seriously wounded during the retreat from the Estuary, the 3rd Guards Special Purpose Brigade of the Main Directorate of the General Staff, the BBC found out after studying social networks and talking with the sister of one of the dead fighters.
Such military formations have been sent to the most important military tasks since Soviet times. While the Russian army was retreating from this city in the Donetsk region, Russian propaganda said that it was being defended by mobilized from the self-proclaimed LNR and Russian volunteers from the Bars detachments that are being formed in the regions.
"The entire third special forces brigade was destroyed by the special forces. Thrown into a meat grinder. How beautiful he is. 19 years old."
"While performing tasks on the territory of Ukraine, my brother died heroically. Eternal memory to you, my little heart, my hero!"
"They reported very sad news for me! My brothers, friends, true comrades in the service and just good men died. I will miss you!"
"We ask for prayers for the repose of the warrior Vyacheslav (Zintsov), a graduate of the boarding school at the Nikolo-Shartom Monastery. He died in the Red Estuary."
On September 30 and October 1, a number of messages appeared on the VKontakte social network, which said that the retreat of the Russian army from the city of Liman, Donetsk region, was not as easy as the official Russian media reported, and not only volunteers from Russia or mobilized residents of the self-proclaimed republics that Vladimir Putin tried to defend the city. Putin by that time declared the territory of Russia.
"Eight people were killed, two were seriously injured. One of them died, one is still alive, but very heavy. The whole group almost died. The guys are real heroes. It's just a pity that there are no more of these heroes," the sister of one of the dead servicemen told the BBC, confirming that during the retreat from the Estuary, the 3rd special Forces brigade of the General Staff of Togliatti lost the department. "A total of nine people were killed, two wounded," said the wife of another victim.
Their relatives do not have complete information about the place and circumstances of the death of the paratroopers, they receive fragmentary information: "I know that these guys were abandoned there, they fought back for a whole day, but they could not. My brother died, he was only 21 years old, his friend died, he was 19 years old," the sister of the deceased said. The families do not yet know when the bodies of the servicemen will be returned home and when the funeral will take place.
Nineteen-year-old Private Danil Boikov was the youngest in this department, senior Lieutenant Vyacheslav Zintsov, Junior Lieutenant Viktor Gorobets, petty officers Andrey Shorin and Yuri Filatov, Private Alexey Chindin died with him. Servicemen Karpenko and Uzbyakov were taken to the hospital with serious injuries. Uzbyakov later died.
This is probably the largest single loss of the 3rd Special Forces Brigade, although it has suffered losses since the beginning of the war: "Of course, there were [losses], but does anyone tell us about it," said the sister of one of the victims.
As far as is known from open sources, the first soldiers of the 3rd GRU brigade died in early March. Before the retreat from the Estuary, the most difficult days for the brigade were the days from March 3 to March 4 - then four scouts were killed: company commander Major Azamat Alimov, Captain Alexey Chuchmanov, junior Sergeant Stanislav Gerasimov and junior Sergeant Egor Bukatin.
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BBC journalists, Mediazones (recognized in Russia as a "foreign agent") and a group of volunteers have been counting the dead Russian servicemen on the basis of open sources since the first day of the war. By September 1, journalists had collected data on 26 dead servicemen of the 3rd Guards Special Forces Brigade, among whom there were five officers, by mid-September, an unusual but important source of information turned out to be a stand with photos of dead military personnel exhibited during the Russian Armed Forces boxing championship in Borisoglebsk. The data of 47 dead soldiers and officers of the 3rd Guards Brigade of the GRU Special Forces were printed on it.
After reviewing the photos on the stand, the BBC found out that the names of most of the mentioned commandos had previously appeared in the media and social networks, but without specifying the place of service. There were also photos of two GRUSHNIKOV on the stand, whose death had not previously been publicly reported. Now at least nine new surnames have been added to this list.
And then, and now, almost every fourth GRU special forces soldier killed is an officer. Such losses are especially sensitive for the army and difficult to recover. You can only replace a special forces officer with a person with the same specialty and level of training, and this takes years of training and training.
According to the expert of the American Center for Naval Analysis Michael Kofman, for every Russian soldier killed during the war in Ukraine, there are on average about three and a half wounded. Based on these data, it can be assumed that more than 200 people could have left the ranks of the 3rd GRU Special Forces Brigade as a result of death or injury (at least temporarily).
The exact number of special forces units is classified. But even according to conservative estimates, the elimination of more than 200 fighters may be equivalent to the complete failure of two companies of special forces. During the war in Chechnya, the intelligence companies of the GRU special forces numbered 45-70 people each. If we take such an assessment as a basis, it is possible that 75% of the brigade's reconnaissance companies have been disabled.
The 3rd GRU Brigade, which is now commanded by Colonel Albert Omarov, was created in 1966 in the GDR. From January 1991 to June 1992, she was stationed in Riga, and then was relocated to the village of Roshchinsky in the Samara region. In 2010, the brigade moved to Togliatti. The brigade's servicemen took part in the civil war in Tajikistan, two Chechen campaigns, a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, and in the early 2000s guarded Russian missions in Kabul, Afghanistan. In August 2017, the brigade lost two of its soldiers in Syria.
Scandalous for the 3rd brigade of the GRU turned out to be 2015, when two Russian citizens Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov were captured near the city of Happiness in the Luhansk region. During the interrogation, they stated that they were soldiers of the 3rd Guards Brigade. The Russian side, which at that time denied the presence of its troops in the east of Ukraine, said that these servicemen had left long ago and fought on the side of the "people's militia of the LPR" as volunteers.
In April 2016, Yerofeyev and Alexandrov were sentenced to 14 years in prison in Ukraine, and a month later they were exchanged for Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, whom the Russian side accused of involvement in the death of the VGTRK film crew. Nothing was reported about the fate of Yerofeyev and Alexandrov, and Savchenko then managed to visit the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, a person involved in a criminal case and a journalist.
The Russian media almost never report on operations involving the special forces of the General Staff, sometimes it becomes known after the fact if the operation is successful, and in the case of the war in Ukraine and if we are talking about the retreats of the Russian army, propaganda always seeks to expose the case so that in a particular sector of the front, not the military personnel failed, but Russian volunteers and mobilized from the self-proclaimed republics.
This is how it happened when the APU broke through the front in the Kharkiv region, eventually liberating Balakleya, Izyum, Kupyansk and many other settlements. Then the Russian media reported that the front line was held there by mobilized from the LPR and soldiers of the Rosgvardiya from Bashkortostan and Samara. Only a few days later it turned out that marines from the Kaliningrad region were captured there.
The official Russian military commanders told about the defenders of the Estuary in similar intonations: "It is immediately clear from them that these are ordinary workers of the war, on whom the fronts have been held throughout our history. No show-offs, excesses in equipment, false bravado," Alexander Kotz from Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote about the military defending the city, specifying that these were volunteers from the Bars-13 detachment, Cossacks, mobilized residents of the self-proclaimed LNR and the 20th army.
The Rybar telegram channel, specializing in military topics, clarified the composition of the defenders of the Estuary: "503 Guards motorized rifle regiment from the 19th motorized rifle Division of the 58th combined arms army." The pro-Russian channel "Older than Edda" wrote: "The Estuary is defended not only by the Kuban LEOPARD, but also by the regular army."
And a former journalist of the Russian pro-Kremlin Lifenews channel and the author of the Wargonzo project, Semyon Pegov, told those gathered on Red Square in honor of the annexation of the occupied territories of Ukraine that the Estuary was defended by "Smolensk Infantry, "Leopard volunteers, "Russian Legion, commandants who do not leave the city."
From the obituaries that have appeared in recent days and conversations with relatives of the victims, it became clear that, in addition to those mobilized from the self-proclaimed republics and volunteers, the GRU special forces also tried (unsuccessfully) to hold the Estuary.
In the USSR, GRU special forces were used to carry out the most important secret operations and sabotage behind enemy lines.
