Russia’s false claim of capturing the Ukrainian town of Kostyantynivka has exposed the slow pace of their advance. The town’s fate provides a rare insight into Russia’s ill-fated war of choice.
Background
The slow and costly infiltration of Kostyantynivka, key to Moscow’s advance in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, lays bare the persistence of the Kremlin’s forces and the devastating casualties they will tolerate to obtain even the smallest of goals.
On July 3, the Ministry of Defense posted a series of videos of Russian troops at various points inside the town’s center, waving Russian flags, to bolster its assertion they had taken the town. However, recent videos, testimony from Ukrainian troops, and independent mapping of the frontlines contradict this claim.
Consequences
The false claim was one of several made in past months by Russia’s leaders, seeking to suggest their battlefield progress was greater than it is, to perhaps persuade their domestic audience, or counterparts in the White House, that their military campaign had not stalled.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky swiftly seized on the falsehood, and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him in the town to talk peace, if indeed it was under Moscow’s control.
The town’s fate exposes both the dogged, relentless nature of Moscow’s assault, and the relatively minute nature of the victories it claims, even if falsely.
Original reporting: KEYT (Ventura/Santa Barbara) — read the source article.
