After humiliating losses on the battlefields around Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, CBS News correspondent Debora Patta took a rare look at how Putin’s demoralized troops are performing on the ground. Even the most heavily fortified Russian base in the occupied northeastern region of Kharkiv collapsed within hours as Ukrainian troops laid siege. Putin mobilizes more troops after combat setbacks 04:08 Senior Lieutenant Taras Berezovets, of the Ukrainian Bohun Special Forces Brigade, led the six-day offensive in the area, which he says was a tipping point. “If the Ukrainian military failed here, I think the whole offensive was in jeopardy,” he told CBS News. In their line of fire, a Russian base called ‘Muskva’, or Moscow, in the small village of Nova Husarivka. Where Russian troops had set up their regional headquarters, but looking around the base now, Pata said they appeared to have fled in such haste that it looked like a museum of panic. Cards from a poker game interrupted by the Ukrainian attack were still on a table where they had been abandoned. Military rations, gas masks, musical instruments — all left on the spot. It appears that the commanders were among the first to flee, abandoning their troops in a nearby camp. Senior Lieutenant Taras Berezovets, of Ukraine’s Bohun Special Forces Brigade, examines items abandoned by Russian soldiers in a trench as they fled a front-line position in the Kharkiv region in September 2022. CBS News Pata walked the long line of a Russian trench dug near the base, where Putin’s forces had settled and held their ground for more than six months. They left it perfectly preserved. A container of food, a fur coat, religious icons and an ancient typewriter were all abandoned as the soldiers fled. “Ukrainian forces effectively attacked the Russians,” Berezovets told Patta. “Not from the front… they’ve gone over their sides.” “They got out of here like rats,” he boasted. The Russians holding the ground in the area were supposed to be among their country’s elite units, including many paratroopers. President Biden slams Russia, Vladimir Putin in UN speech 05:09 The men Putin is now recruiting to the front lines are far less inexperienced soldiers, some of whom have never fought in a war. With the partial mobilization of the Russian military, Putin could see 300,000 men being called up to join the fight. Some Russians have already received calls to report for military service, and any reservist with medical experience has been asked to report immediately. It has proven a deeply unpopular move, sparking nationwide protests that arrested more than 1,300 people in the hours immediately following Putin’s announcement, according to the independent Russian monitoring group OVD-Info. Russian police detain protesters during an unsanctioned protest rally against President Vladimir Putin’s partial national military mobilization amid the war in Ukraine, September 21, 2022, in Moscow, Russia. Getty CBS News has said Ukraine captured hundreds of Russian soldiers during the offensive around Kharkiv. They will no doubt be used in prisoner exchanges, such as the most recent one, which secured the release of more than 200 people who had fought for Ukraine, including two Americans. More
