Leaked report reveals Ukraine has wiped out elite Russia military unit

A new report obtained by the Washington Post has revealed that Ukrainian forces dealt Vladimir Putin a major blow this year after essentially wiping out one of Russia’s most formidable military units. 

The 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade was one of the first units sent into Ukraine during Russia’s initial February 24th invasion, yet despite its advantages, the unit has suffered greatly over the last ten months. 

Shortly after the invasion began, soldiers from the 200th were ambushed, leaving many dead and almost all of their equipment abandoned. 

The rest of the brigade spent most of March and April defending positions around Kharkiv where it lost hundreds of soldiers from two battalion tactical groups. 

By late May, the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade was routed in Ukraine’s lightning counter-offensive in Kharkiv Oblast and much of the formation was utterly destroyed according to the report. 

A document detailing the state of Russia’s most formidable military unit showed that by the end of May, the 200th had fewer than 900 soldiers left in its two battalions out of the 1400 troops it began the war with.  

One mobilized soldier who was posted with the 200th as part of Putin’s September mobilization order told reporters at The Washington Post that the unit was in “a state of decay.”

The unnamed soldier said that “painted helmets from 1941 and vests without plates” were being supplied to soldiers.“They are not even training us,” the soldier continued, “They just tell you, ‘You are a shooter now. Here you go, here is a machine gun.’”

In a war that has been utterly disastrous for the world's second-strongest global military power, the defeat of the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade stands out as particularly humiliating. 

Russia’s 200th Sperate Motor Rifle Brigade was originally tasked with guarding the country’s strategic nuclear arsenal on the Kola Peninsula, and as such, it was always in a state of combat readiness. 

Stationed in Pechanga, Murmansk, the 200th was often tapped by President Putin to execute the country’s most important military missions. 

Officers from the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade were sent to Syria to help Bashir al-Assad’s forces maintain their grip on power at the height of the Syrian Civil War and according to Ukrainian sources, soldiers from the unit were also sent to Ukraine in 2014 to help separatist forces seize territory in the Donbas. 

Considered Russia’s best-trained and best-equipped military formation, the 200th entered Ukraine with more military experience than most units but that didn’t stop them from suffering enormous casualties. 

During the Kharkiv counter-offensive, an advisor to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that of the “648 servicemen who were sent, 645 died. Only three remained, two of them wounded.”

While the claim that 645 soldiers were killed cannot be independently verified, it is in line with what foreign observers have predicted—namely, that the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade has probably been eliminated as a combat effective force. 

"They are barely at 60 percent strength, being forced to rely on reinforcements that aren't near enough," said former director of Finland's defense intelligence service  Pekka Toveri in an interview earlier this year. 

"You have guys who are refusing to fight,” Toveri added, “guys who are missing. It all tells us that for Russia the war has gone terribly wrong."

The 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade's involvement in Kharkiv ended in mid-September when they were routed near Kupiansk by Colonel Pavlo Fedosenko, commander of Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade. 

After the rout, only small fragments of one of the 200th’s two battalions were left and according to Col. Fedosenko, it bore little resemblance to the force that entered Ukraine in February. 

Most of the 200th’s officers had been killed or injured and the unit had lost more than 70% of its equipment, including 32 tanks, and over 100 other vehicles. 

"Nothing of that brigade is left," Col. Fedosenko said in an interview with The Washinton Post, "It's completely wiped out."