(RoyalPatriot.com )- Recently uncovered documents from an abandoned Russian bunker in eastern Ukraine confirm how weakened its military had become as Ukraine’s counteroffensive over the summer scored significant victories, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
According to an explosive report from Reuters last week, Ukrainian forces came across a bunker in the eastern Ukrainian town of Balakliia in September where they found thousands of documents stuffed into a furnace and scattered on the floor, most of which detailed the “inner workings of the Russian war machine.
A notebook containing 91 handwritten pages detailed coordinates of Russian intelligence units, call records from commanders, battle details, and an accounting of men killed and equipment destroyed.
According to Reuters, which reviewed over a thousand pages of documents, they detail “the inner workings of the Russian military and shed new light on events leading up” to Russia’s largest defeat, the “chaotic retreat” from northeastern Ukraine in September.
The documents also reveal the Ukrainian forces’ “increasing effectiveness” and offer clues to how the war may unfold now that Russia is under pressure in southern Ukraine around the Black Sea coast, Reuters reported.
Reuters also reported that it had verified the authenticity of the documents it reviewed.
In response to the Reuters report, the Institute for the Study of War released research last Wednesday concluding that the report confirms its belief that Russia’s conventional forces in Ukraine are “severely degraded” and the military has “largely lost offensive capabilities since the summer of 2022.”
It said Russia’s strategic commanders are “micromanaging” the decisions of operational commanders on “tactical matters” and morale among Russian forces “is very low.”
The institute said the Reuters report confirms how depleted the units near Balakiia had become and how “poor morale, bad logistics, and overbearing commanders contributed to Russian forces’ poor performance.”
Read the full, detailed report from Reuters HERE.
