Russian Troops Driven Back by Ukraine Counter Among Most Elite Forces: ISW

Russia's most accomplished forces are becoming "increasingly degraded" in the face of gains by Ukrainian troops, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The U.S. think tank said on Monday that Ukrainian forces had made substantial gains around Lyman and in northern Kherson Oblast over the previous 24 hours, where Russian groupings had been among Vladimir Putin's best conventional fighting forces.

Geolocated footage backs Russian claims that Ukrainian troops are pushing east of Lyman from where Russian soldiers retreated last Saturday and may have broken through the Luhansk Oblast border, towards Kreminna.

The ISW said the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, along with the 144th Motorized Rifle Division had faced "apparent failures to hold territory against major Ukrainian counter-offensive actions."

This chimed with ISW's previous assessment that "even the most elite Russian military forces are becoming increasingly degraded as the war continues."

It added that this had also been seen in the collapse of the 4th Tank Division of the 1st Guards Tank Army during the Kharkiv counteroffensive last month.

The ISW anticipated that Putin would try to redirect blame for the Russian military failures in Kharkiv and Lyman in which he faced significant losses by assigning Alexander Zhuravlev as the new commander of the Western Military District (WMD).

The appointment may aim to shield Colonel General Alexander Lapin, commander of the Central Military District (CMD), from criticism for failures around Lyman in the Russian nationalist information space.

Meanwhile, British defense officials said on Tuesday that a conscription cycle announced by Putin on September 30, separate to the one he had announced on September 21, would start a month later than usual, in November.

This "late start to the cycle" illustrated the "growing pressures on Russia's ability to train and equip a large number of new conscripted personnel."

The U.K Ministry of Defense said there were "significant" challenges to accommodate, train and equip conscripted troops and that "deficiencies within the Russian administrative and logistical systems will continue to undermine these efforts."

It comes as the U.S. would soon deliver four more HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) to Ukraine as part of a $625 million package of military aid due to be announced on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported, citing a U.S. official.

This would be the first time Washington has sent more HIMARS to Ukraine since late July, taking the reported number of the systems that have struck at Russian command centers and depots to 20.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.