Ukraine war: Shocking number of Russian corpses a grim illustration of Ukrainian battlefield success
There are a quite shocking number of Russian corpses left in the wake of the Ukrainian blitz on their eastern front.
Kyiv’s troops are moving so fast and methodically, there’s no time to collect the enemy’s dead.
It’s a grim illustration of Ukraine’s current battlefield successes.
Ukraine news live: Large fire breaks out on key bridge linking Russia to Crimea
There is evidence all around of Russians being ambushed
As we followed their route through the village of Yampil and on to Torske on the edge of the Luhansk border, we saw scores of burnt military vehicles and scorched forest trees, which highlighted the ferocity of the battle.
There are repeated signs the Ukrainians have ambushed their enemy, often it seems, laying in wait for them and attacking them from the front as the Russians try to flee to their defensive positions deeper into the Donbas.
The Ukrainians have the city of Kremina in their crosshairs now. Seizing it will open the gateway for them into Luhansk and the entire region, and leave them poised to reclaim the twin cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk.
The road from Torske to Kremina is scarred with bombed vehicle wrecks.
We saw Ukrainian soldiers loaded with ammunition and kitbags heading off down the road into Luhansk to do more battle.
“Everything will be Ukraine,” one of them shouted after us with a cheery reassurance. “Hear that?” another called, motioning above us.
There’s a constant backdrop of shelling, of the firing of Grad rockets, and at one stage we hear a jet in the air followed by the terrifying thunder of bombs raining down in the direction of Kremina.
“They will drop more here soon,” he cautions.
The pockmarked yellow bus we are nearby has the body of a Russian soldier hanging out of the driver’s seat. The bus door is open, and his arms are dangling down above the road, as if he’d desperately tried to climb out before death claimed him.
His hands are black with ingrained dirt. His head is gouged open. Death and war are tragically ugly yet simultaneously pitiful.
His relatives in Russia have likely no idea of his fate or how he met his end on this mangled, broken bus at the end of a road pitted with vehicle carcasses.
The stretch of roadway next to the bus is covered in a blanket of Russian uniforms and other discarded clothing and belongings. It’s a chaotic, muddled mayhem reeking of panic and fear.
A car crushed by a powering tank
Digging a grave
A short distance away, a woman called Anna, who’s wearing a colourful woollen headscarf, tells us of the ferocious fighting outside the farmhouse where she lives with her husband. She’s only just retired from farming and probably looked forward to some relaxing time after a lifetime of hard graft.
Instead, she tells us how a Russian soldier had run into her yard days earlier, trying to hide from the onslaught.
He was wearing civilian clothes but had a weapon and green army body armour. When he’s gunned down, she can’t bear to leave his corpse on her yard for the birds and rats to eat.
She can’t stop crying, recounting what happened. It’s still very fresh and raw for her. She and her husband drag the body to the field at the back of their home and dig a grave, on top of which they place the green flak jacket.
The documents they find on him show he’s 30 years old and from Moscow.
Explainers:
Why is Cuban missile crisis being compared to Russia’s war in Ukraine?
What nuclear weapons does Russia have?
A Russian life marked with respect by one Ukrainian mother
“He was the first military person I’d ever seen dead,” she tells us between sobs.
“I felt nothing, nothing. He came to kill us.” But her voice trails off as she’s enveloped by weeping.
The trauma of this war has not yet stripped Anna of her basic humanity. He’s around the same age as her own son. Another young man dying in a war he never chose to fight in.
The shells keep landing close and make her constantly flinch. “It’s so scary. It’s so, so, scary,” she says. “When the houses are on fire, it’s terrifying.
In the midst of horror
“This house was burning just here.” She nods towards her neighbour’s home.
We ask if she’d prefer to go to her shelter to hide for a bit and feel safer.
“Can I go? Is that OK?” Even enduring all this death and torment, she’s unfailingly polite to strangers.
She hugs our Ukrainian colleague Artem, who’s around the same age as the dead Russian soldier. He’s a warm, friendly face to her in the midst of this horror.
Equipment and body armour is left strewn at roadsides
And yet all the political talk is of worse to come – an impending tactical nuclear attack. It’s a threat US President Joe Biden appears to be taking seriously, and which the Ukrainian troops we spoke to seem unnervingly prepared for.
“We are not afraid of anything any more,” a soldier calling himself Lynx tells us. “We know what we’re fighting for – we’re fighting for our land.
“We’re not afraid of nuclear or chemical weapons. We’ve started, and we won’t stop until we liberate all our land.”
‘Mentally, I’m ready to die’
The rest of his unit sitting atop their armoured personnel carrier are equally undeterred by the nuclear threat.
“Mentally I’m ready to die,” Oleksander says, “so if it (a nuclear attack) happens, then it will happen.”
When you’re prepared to give your life in a war, the manner of that dying takes on a very different significance, it seems.
We travel with the crew across an increasingly boggy forest with pools of muddy water dotted everywhere.
The seasons are rapidly changing, and the incoming inclement weather is what the Ukrainians are trying to get ahead of.
Only military vehicles can easily traverse terrain so taxing, and the deteriorating conditions will challenge even these.
The Ukrainians are in a race against winter as well as a ferocious battle with Russian troops – and they cannot afford to lose either.
Alex Crawford is reporting with cameraman Jake Britton and producers Chris Cunningham and Artem Lysak
The warning was meant for British parliamentarians, of course, but MI5 and the government are also trying to send a signal to China.
We know what you are doing, and in ministers’ words today we “won’t stand for it”.
But in the wake of the collapsed China spying case last month, the security services also want to reestablish a badly dented sense of deterrence.
Politics latest: China responds to MI5’s spy warning to MPs
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Security minister accuses China of interference
That case against two British men accused of spying for Beijing fell apart because officials would not use the words “enemy” or “national security threat” to describe China.
The failure projected a sense of weakness in the face of Chinese espionage efforts, something the government is keen to dispel.
(L-R) Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry had the charges against them withdrawn in September. Pics: Reuters
Those efforts remain persistent and dangerous, security officials insist.
China has always aggressively sought the official and commercial secrets of Western nations.
It regards that mission as a patriotic duty, an essential part of a national project to catch up with and then overtake the West.
In the words of Britain’s security minister, Dan Jarvis, on Tuesday, China seeks “to interfere in our sovereign affairs in favour of its own interests”.
Read more:
Parliamentarians warned of spying attempts from China agents
Indeed, much of China’s technological and economic progress was, until recently, built on intellectual property stolen from rival nations.
Its private sector has been notorious for ripping off and reverse engineering Western know-how, pilfered from joint venture partners or through commercial espionage.
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Intelligence agencies say the Chinese have also hoovered up vast amounts of personal data from all of us through social media platforms like TikTok and other methods, collecting in bulk for now, for sifting and harvesting later.
Officially, the Chinese government denies all these allegations. It has to be said that Western spies are also hard at work snooping on China.
But critics say Western nations have been naive and too trusting of the Chinese threat.
While the British government remains unsure whether to identify China as an enemy or simply a commercial rival, an ambivalence remains, which Beijing will continue doing its best to exploit.
Mass killings and millions forced to flee for their lives have made Sudan the “epicentre of suffering in the world”, according to the UN’s humanitarian affairs chief.
About 12 million people are believed to have been displaced and at least 40,000 killed in the civil war – but aid groups say the true death toll could be far greater.
Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told Sky’s The World With Yalda Hakim the situation was “horrifying”.
“It’s utterly grim right now – it’s the epicentre of suffering in the world,” he said of Sudan.
The war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – who were once allies – started in Khartoum in April 2023 but has spread across the country.
A child receives treatment at a camp in Tawila after fleeing Al Fashir . Pic: AP
The fighting has inflicted almost unimaginable misery on a nation that was already suffering a humanitarian crisis.
Famine has been declared in some areas and Mr Fletcher said there was a “sense of rampant brutality and impunity” in the east African nation.
“I spoke to so many people who told me stories of mass executions, mass rape, sexual violence being weaponised as part of the conflict,” he said.
The fall of a key city
Last month, the RSF captured Al Fashir – the capital of North Darfur state – after a siege of more than 18 months.
Hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands forced to flee, according to the UN and aid groups.
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Explained: Key Sudan city falls
The World Health Organisation said more than 450 people alone were reportedly killed at a maternity hospital in the city.
RSF fighters also went house to house to murder civilians and carried out sexual assault and rape, according to aid workers and displaced people.
The journey to escape Al Fashir goes through areas with no access to food, water or medical help – and Mr Fletcher said people had described to him the “horrors” of trying to make it out.
“One woman [was] carrying her dead neighbour’s malnourished child – and then she herself was attacked on the road as she fled towards Tawila,” he told Sky News.
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Investigating thousands missing in Sudan’s war
Such is the violence in Al Fashir, blood from mass killings appears to stain the sand in satellite images from Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, Mr Fletcher added.
“We’ve got to make sure there are teams going in to investigate these atrocities. Al Fashir is a crime scene right now,” he said.
“But we’ve also got to make sure we’ve got protection for civilians from the future atrocities.”
Children at the forefront of suffering
Mr Fletcher told Yalda Hakim that children had “borne the brunt” and made up one in five of those killed in Al Fashir.
He said a child he met “recoiled from me” and “flinched” when he gestured towards a Manchester City logo on his shirt when they were kicking a ball around.
“This is a six-year-old, so what has he seen and experienced to be that terrified of other people?” he asked.
He’s urging the international community to boost funding to help civilians, and a “much more vigorous, energised diplomacy” to try to end the fighting.
“This can’t be so complex, so difficult, that the world can’t fix it,” he told Sky News.
“And we’ve seen some momentum. We’ve seen the quad – Egypt, America, Saudi, the UAE just recently – getting more engaged.
“I’m in daily contact with them all, including the White House envoy, Dr Massad Boulos, but we need to sustain that diplomatic engagement and show the creativity and patience that’s needed.”
Read more:
Genocide unfolding in Darfur, warns Sudanese government
‘Tens of thousands killed in two days’ in Sudan city
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In full: Monday’s The World
Hopes of an imminent end to the violence currently look unlikely.
Sudan’s military leader, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, said on Friday that his forces would not stop until the RSF is wiped out.
“This war will not come to an end with a truce, but when rebels are destroyed,” he said – according to a statement from Sudan’s ruling council.
“We call on all Sudanese to join the fight, and for those who can carry weapons to come forward.”
The RSF and the Sudanese army have previously agreed to various ceasefire proposals during their two-and-a-half-year-old war, but none have succeeded.
The United Nations Security Council has passed a US resolution which endorses Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza.
Russia, which had circulated a rival resolution, abstained along with China on the 13-0 vote.
The resolution endorses the US president’s 20-point ceasefire plan, which calls for a yet-to-be-established Board of Peace as a transitional authority that Mr Trump would head.
Read more: What does Trump’s Gaza peace plan look like?
US ambassador Mike Waltz said the resolution was “historic and constructive”, but it was “just the beginning”.
“Today’s resolution represents another significant step towards a stable Gaza that will be able to prosper and an environment that will allow Israel to live in security,” he added.
Pic: Reuters
The proposal gives no timeline or guarantee for an independent Palestinian state, only saying “the conditions may finally be in place” after advances in the reconstruction of Gaza and reforms of the Palestinian Authority – now governing parts of the West Bank.
It also says that the US “will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous co-existence”.
The language on statehood was strengthened after Arab nations and Palestinians pressured the US over nearly two weeks of negotiations, but it has also angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He has vowed to oppose any attempt to establish a Palestinian state, and on Sunday pledged to demilitarise Gaza “the easy way or the hard way”.
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From October: How will peace plan unfold?
Hamas: International force is ‘in favour of’ Israel
In a statement rejecting the resolutions’ passing, a Hamas spokesperson said that it “falls far short of the political and humanitarian demands and rights of our Palestinian people”.
“The effects and repercussions of this war continue to this day, despite the declared end of the war according to President Trump’s plan,” they added.
“The resolution imposes an international trusteeship mechanism on the Gaza Strip, which our people, their forces, and factions reject.”
The spokesperson then said that “assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favour of the occupation”.
Read more:
Trump asks Israeli president to ‘fully pardon’ Netanyahu
Inside Jordan warehouse holding Gaza aid ‘refused entry by Israel’
The Palestinian Authority, however, issued a statement welcoming the resolution and said it is ready to take part in its implementation.
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