Russian 12-thousandth 11th Army Corps sent to Ukraine was almost completely destroyed - Forbes
Six years ago, Russian Navy formed a new army corps whose task was to defend Kaliningrad. This year, when full scale war in Ukraine started to go badly for Russia, Kremlin pulled 11th Army Corps out of Kaliningrad and sent it to Ukraine. Where it was quickly destroyed by Ukrainian army.
It was mentioned by Forbes, reports Censor.NЕТ.
"The corps, sandwiched between two NATO countries along a strategic sea, was supposed to give Russian troops an advantage in a global war. Instead, it became cannon fodder for the Ukrainian army, which on paper was weaker than the Russian one. Now Kaliningrad is almost defenseless, and the threat that the region's troops once posed to NATO has disappeared.
Before Russia expanded its war in Ukraine at the end of February, there were at least 12,000 Russian troops in Kaliningrad with about 100 T-72 tanks, a couple hundred APCs, Msta-S howitzers and BM-27 and BM-30 missiles.
This dynamic has changed dramatically since February. The Kremlin committed 80% of its ground forces to a broader invasion of Ukraine - and immediately lost many of them in a doomed attempt to capture Kyiv.
Scattered along the roads leading to the capital, Russian battalions, brigades and divisions, poorly managed and undersupplied, were vulnerable to Ukrainian artillery, drones and infantry teams carrying precision anti-tank missiles.
After only a month of fierce fighting, the Russians retreated from Kyiv. Estimates vary, but it is possible that they suffered 50,000 killed and wounded by the time the front line stabilized in May. Desperate for fresh troops, the Kremlin mobilized the 11th Army Corps, moving it by ship and plane to Belgorod in southern Russia and then to Ukraine near Kharkiv.
Three months of heavy fighting undermined the corps' strength. Reuters has obtained
some documents from the 11th Army Corps. A spreadsheet dated August 30, just before the major Ukrainian counteroffensive, indicated 71% of full corps strength. Some battalions, however, had been reduced to only a tenth of their original manpower.
The corps got worse. In late August and early September, Ukrainian forces launched a double counteroffensive east of Kharkiv and north of Kherson. The Kharkiv operation, which involved a dozen Ukrainian brigades, exposed the deep weakness of Russian forces in the area, including the 11th Army Corps.
Tens of thousands of Russians fled, surrendered or were killed on the spot as Ukrainian troops liberated a thousand square miles of the Kharkiv region in a frantic two weeks. The 11th Army Corps suffered more than most Russian formations in the region. In late September, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., described the corps as "severely battered."
It may have been an underestimate. The Ukrainian General Staff concluded that the corps lost 200 vehicles and half of its personnel in the counteroffensive.
Perhaps the 11th Army Corps will survive. If so, it will almost certainly need many months to rest, rearm and recruit to regain at least some of its former strength.
The deployment and subsequent destruction of the 11th Army Corps is a terrible blow to Russia's war in Ukraine.
But the consequences extend to the whole of Europe. The 11th Army Corps was supposed to defend Kaliningrad and threaten NATO's eastern front. Now it can do neither," the newspaper writes.
