On the morning of March 17, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that a group of LPR troops during the night from Wednesday to Thursday conducted successful battles against Ukrainian nationalists from several directions inside Severodonetsk and Rubezhnoye. And the DPR units are trying to seize the settlements of Maryinka, Glorious and Sweet. The advance per day was 4 kilometers.
Already on Thursday evening, the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov, added a new one to this information. He said that the Russian Armed Forces are successfully continuing the offensive and have taken control of two more settlements - Novomayorskoye and Prechistovka. The advance for the day was 10 kilometers.
According to the general, in the evening of March 16, high-precision missiles struck an air strike on the arsenal of ammunition storage in the village of Sarny, Rivne region. As a result, ammunition depots were destroyed, including missiles for the Tochka-U tactical complex. The messages about the successful actions of our VKS have also been updated. During the day, aviation and air defense systems shot down three Ukrainian helicopters in the air - Mi-24, Mi-8 and Mi-2. As well as more than a dozen APU drones, including several Bayraktar TB-2.
Operational-tactical, army and unmanned aircraft hit 29 military facilities of Ukraine. Among them are the installation of a multiple launch rocket system, three command posts, including one mobile field command post of the brigade, six ammunition depots and 14 places of accumulation of military equipment.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, according to Konashenkov, 182 Ukrainian aircraft and helicopters, 177 drones, 1,393 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, 134 multiple rocket launchers, 523 field artillery and mortar guns, as well as 1,182 units of special military vehicles have been destroyed.
In general, the daily briefings of the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, increasingly resemble brief front-line reports. "Offensive actions continue... Settlements have been taken under control... Destroyed ...". Instead of ellipsis, the names of cities and villages, types of military equipment, numbers follow.
Someone perceives this brevity as evidence of our alleged military problems. They say that the operation in Ukraine is being slowed down. But people are smarter and more knowledgeable: General Konashenkov can tell and show how skillfully Russian units are fighting nationalists all day long. There is an abundance of such information in our Ministry of Defense. For publication, the military uses only a small fraction of this information array - only the most important, which is of fundamental importance for an objective picture of what is happening in Ukraine.
Yesterday, our military department spent the whole day distributing video footage of how skillfully and courageously Russian servicemen act in a combat situation. How they effectively use modern equipment and weapons. Filming of the results of such work was also demonstrated.
For example, the wreckage of the Bayraktar TB-2 drone shot down by our military was shown lying on the ground. Judging by their spread, the impact drone was hit with great accuracy. He was clearly blown to pieces while still in the air.
Another video captured a checkpoint of Russian paratroopers on one of the roads in the Kiev region. It is protected by concrete slabs, covered with armored vehicles - all this was clearly filmed near the front line.
However, let's return to the statements of General Igor Konashenkov. Yesterday, he said that the specialists of the RCMP troops studied the original documents revealing the details of the implementation of a secret US project on the basis of a laboratory in Kharkiv to study the ways of transmitting diseases to humans through bats.
According to these materials, the research was carried out in Kharkiv for many years on a systematic basis and under the direct supervision of specialists from the USA. "Within the framework of the American project, the Kharkiv Institute of Veterinary Medicine studied wild birds as vectors for the transfer of highly pathogenic avian influenza," the general noted. "At the same time, the conditions under which the transmission processes can become uncontrollable, cause economic damage, and create food security risks were assessed."
Konashenkov promised that in the near future a new package of documents received from Ukrainian biolaboratory employees will be published and the results of their examination will be presented.
This promise was fulfilled on the same day. A detailed report on secret documents about the US biological laboratories in Ukraine was made by the head of the radiation, chemical and biological Protection forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov.
Yuri Gavrilov
