Forbes: Many Russians Surrender In Vovchansk

The occupiers' plan failed.

Ukrainian troops have blocked up to 400 Russians at a chemical plant in the center of Vovchansk, and according to the Ukrainian Center for Defence Strategies, thirty Russians have already surrendered after repeated attempts to rescue them failed.

According to Forbes, in a few weeks of fierce fighting, forces of several Ukrainian brigades blocked the Russian offensive north of the Vovcha River. At the same time, Russian forces, equivalent to at least two battalions with hundreds of infantrymen, stormed the Vovchansk Chemical Plant on the right bank of the river. Obviously, the Russians' plan was to seize the chemical plant and then start a river-crossing operation from there to break into southern Vovchansk.

“The plan failed when Ukrainian troops - possibly from the 9th Rifle Battalion, the Russian Volunteer Corps, or the 36th Marine Brigade - attacked west of the chemical plant and advanced several blocks north, cutting off the Russians in the plant from their comrades in the west,” Forbes writes.

Ukrainian fighters noted that the Russians were surrounded with no chance of evacuation or reinforcements and reported “a bunch of dead and wounded orcs.”

Russian commanders this weekend ordered their troops west of the chemical plant to break through Ukrainian positions. However, two attempts to break through to the surrounded Russian troops were repulsed by the Ukrainian forces, the Center for Defence Strategies reports.

"Obviously, it was then that many Russians began to surrender. Although Russian and Ukrainian troops regularly take each other prisoner, they rarely do so by the dozens. Most surrenderings, as a rule, occur during the siege of large cities and chaotic hasty retreats," Forbes notes.

Thus, hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers surrendered after spending several weeks in surrounded Mariupol. In mid-February 2024, the Russians captured dozens of Ukrainians who were retreating from the ruins of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.

"The fact that so many Russians surrendered at the same time in Vovchansk, a city that neither side fully controls and which remains the subject of disputes, should have frightened the Russian command. The Russian army should not have gotten bogged down in Vovchansk. And, of course, it should not have lost dozens of soldiers in an unsuccessful attempt to seize a bridgehead for a further attempt to cross the narrow river in the middle of the city,” the article reads.

Whatever the Russians' goals, when they crossed the border into northern Ukraine last month, they not only failed to achieve them - their prospects for success are decreasing more and more, the newspaper emphasizes.