the ministry of defence here, said the russian campaign in the east has lost momentum and is now significantly behind schedule . in fact, they believe russia may have lost a third of the groundforces it sent into ukraine in the face of this continued resistance. last week the ukrainians blew up several pontoon bridges over a river in the luhansk region, destroying an entire russian batallion. these are the pictures you are looking at now. these are the pictures you are looking at now. and suddenly after weeks spent fretting over what would happen if russia crushed ukraine, western european leaders are now worried about what might happen if ukraine actually wins. last week the french president emmanuel macron said a humiliation of russia could create a whole new set of problems, the italian prime minister mario draghi and the german chancellor 0laf scholz have stressed it would be up to ukraine to determine how this ends but like president macron, they ve underscored their preferen
august, labour day, early september, russian forces are going to culminate, theyjust don t have the logistics necessary to maintain what they are doing. i think they have very serious manpower problems. and as you know, i don t think of you as an amateur in any way, but as you do know, the moral component of what is going on is so much more important thanjust the physical. the ukrainians have the will, i don t believe the russians do or that they can sustain it. as you show these pictures, this is important. this scene we have all been watching, not only were the bridges destroyed, but the engineers, the soldiers who were trained how to do this. they would have been killed or wounded. this is just as devastating a loss as is the actual components of the pontoon
forces could do in afghanistan and iraq and will freak out the russians. john: it s pretty remarkable. some counts upwards of 80 armored vehicles, tanks, other vehicles were destroyed in this. there are the pontoon bridges here that you can see that were just destroyed, trying to put those across the river. they rolled some tanks across, they sunk the pontoon bridges, and armor here in the water. and look at all the mud. i like how ukraine was smart enough to see this coming and plan it out to reap the maximum destruction on this russian batallion tactical group. remnants of the unit will not want to make an attack like this again. in vehicles and moving as a group they are vulnerable and now they know it. not just this batallion, are they going to want to move anywhere, knowing that the ukrainians have got intelligence on them and they have a bead on them as well. oh, it s a message because ukraine can track them with
reports, a battle that happened somewhere, we are not sure, but somewhere in this area crossing the donetsk river, ukrainian military got weird the russians were amassing on this side of the river, and were about to cross it using pontoon bridges. guess what, let s go blow the crap out of it and they did. take a look at this. these are t72 tanks that have have been lollipoped or blown off. what kind of blow is this to russia? well, ukraine did a tremendous job here, and i am so impressed with these tactics because, john, they watched the russians put the pontoon across, watched the first tanks and vehicles roll and then they unleashed an artillery barrage that used little cluster munition, on a par what our
successfully blocked a russian advance at a key river. you can see pontoon bridges destroyed. it s not entirely clear who blew them up. the ukrainians say it was them. russia almost three months into its invasion of ukraine. on friday, russia s top general finally accepted a call from lloyd austin. the first call in 84 days, the first since this war began. the pentagon says they spoke for an hour but gave no detail beyond saying the u.s. repeated its call for an immediate cease-fire and to keep the lines of communication open. so far, the kremlin has been silent. and at the old but destroyed azov steel factory on the coast, ukraine says, quote, difficult negotiations continue to evacuate the wounded soldiers holding out inside. let s get a closer look now at the bloody retreat of russian forces from kharkiv.