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Vladimir Putin has already LOST the Ukraine war says top US general as elite Russian unit wiped out for third time
VLADIMIR Putin’s has already lost the war in Ukraine, America’s top general has said.
General Mark Milley said the Russians were “paying an enormous price on the battlefield” as an elite unit has now been wiped out for the the third time in the Ukraine war.
A picture showing Russian tanks destroyed after an attack near Vuhledar[/caption]
General Mark Milley said Russia has already lost the Ukraine war[/caption]
Ukrainian troops stationed in Vuhledar have been under intense fire since January[/caption]
The aftermath of heavy bombing in the region[/caption]
The huge loss of Russian troops happened during their attempted siege of Vuhledar, a strategic hamlet in Donetsk.
The elite 155th naval infantry were obliterated like “turkeys in a shooting range” as it stormed the mining town, trying to seize the high ground.
General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a NATO meeting: “Russia has lost.
“They’ve lost strategically, operationally and tactically and they are paying an enormous price on the battlefield
“Until Putin ends his war of choice, the international community will continue to support Ukraine with the equipment and capabilities it needs.”
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin echoed the view that the Russians were throwing troops into the meat grinder.
“We see Russia introducing a number of new troops to the battlefield.
“Many of those troops are ill-trained and ill-equipped, and so their casualty rate has been really high.”
Colonel Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, a Ukrainian military spokesman, said: “The 155th brigade already had to be restaffed three times.
“And now almost the entire brigade has been destroyed.
“The first time after Irpin and Bucha; the second time they were defeated near Donetsk – they recovered again.
“And now almost the entire brigade has already been destroyed near Vuhledar.”
The fighting around Vuhledar has seen one of the heaviest concentrated military losses the Kremlin has suffered since the war began on February 24.
According to POLITICO, the marine brigade of 5,000 men was wiped out.
Russian forces were reportedly losing 150 to 300 marines a day since the planned offensive began in January.
Ukrainian officials claimed the swathe of enemy troops were killed, wounded or captured.
The catastrophic losses come just days after footage emerged of 31 Russian vehicles being blitzed as they encroached the region.
The total carnage and tactical failures were lambasted by Russian hardliners.
Igor Girkin, a Russian former intelligence officer, called for public show trials to punish incompetent generals responsible for the battlefield embarrassments.
Girkin said: “Some of them are complete cretins – all the mistakes that were made before, were repeated.”
During the battle, Ukrainians held higher ground and were able to pick off the marines.
Girkin described the scene “like turkeys in a shooting range”.
The mining town, home to 14,000 people before the war, sits on high ground close to the only rail link between Crimea and Donetsk.
It was fortified with Ukrainian artillery after withstanding three months of attacks from the Spetsnaz special forces, armoured battalions and infantry troops.
The heaviest waves of assault came last week, leading to the bloodbath of marines.
Evgeny Nazarenko, a spokesman for one of the Ukrainian units involved, said the Russian advances were easily spotted from high-rise buildings where they were positioned.
He said: “We are at the top and they are at the bottom.
“They are perfectly visible.”
Ukrainian forces also published a video of Russian troops piling up on the battlefield as they approached Vuhledar from open fields.
During the video, a Ukrainian gunner can be heard saying: “Go make a cemetery.
“Gosh, the first column went there and blew up and then the second one went exactly the same route.”
Tom Cooper, a military historian who has studied the battle, described Vuhledar as “a big, tall fortress in the middle of an empty, flat desert”.
The shameful defeat comes just days after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said his troops had control of the area.
Kyiv’s Defence Ministry responded with a video showing the destruction of a Russian military column in the area.
The footage showed Russian tanks driving into minefields, bombs destroying armoured vehicles, panic-stricken troops and bodies of soldiers strewn across the ground.
Ukrainian officials claimed the majority of the losses were from the Pacific Fleet’s 155th Marine Brigade, based at Vladivostok.
The 155th became infamous for looting around Kyiv last year.
The brigade was nicknamed Russia’s “unhappiest” unit after suffering heavy losses in several failed attacks.
Russian eastern commander, Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, was blamed for the mass casualties.
A group of hardline military bloggers and media channels close to Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin have launched an online tirade slamming Muradov.
One social media channel linked to Wagner threatened Muradov with assassination after calling him a “sissy b****”.
Another blogger with half a million followers demanded public trials “to punish officers, especially high-ranking officers, who over and over again demonstrate failures on the battlefield”.
The chronic failures in Vuhledar has damaged Putin’s bravado, who has repeatedly claimed a massive “new offensive” is coming in weeks to coincide with the first anniversary of the war.
The Kremlin is believed to have hundreds of thousands of soldiers, thousands of tanks, and hundreds of warplanes preparing for the new assault.
Putin has also ordered that by next month his troops should fully occupy the Donetsk region.
Currently, half of the city is under Russian control.
However, the Vuhledar fiasco has encouraged Kyiv to believe Moscow has failed to heal divisions among senior commanders.
Oleksandr V Danylyuk, head of the Centre for Defence Reforms think-tank in Kyiv, told the Daily Mail: “This is a serious setback with huge losses from one brigade.
“If they continue to use their troops in this way, it could lead to a collapse of Russian military forces during their expected major offensive.”
Vuhledar is about 100 miles from Bakhmut, the epicentre of the war’s fiercest fighting for several months.
Both sides have sustained heavy losses there after Russia hurled vast numbers of conscripts and prisoner recruits into “the meat grinder”.
Ukraine officials claim 824 Russian soldiers are dying on average a day.
That is four times higher than rates seen last summer.
The British Ministry of Defence confirmed the figure as “likely accurate”.
Fierce Ukrainian soldier march towards Donetsk[/caption]
Aerial footage of Vuhledar[/caption]
Ukrainian gunners have been fending off Russian advances in the region[/caption]
The town has been totally destroyed as a result of the war[/caption]
Two Russian tanks stopped in their tracks[/caption]
The HTC Vive XR Elite is a shapeshifting, lightweight luxury of a VR headset
As someone who considers Uniqlo an extravagance, the HTC Vive XR Elite might just be the most expensive thing I’ll ever wear. Revealed at CES 2023 and set for launch in March, this is the first Vive VR headset in years with real PC gaming credentials, while borrowing from the more compact design of the mobile VR-minded Vive Flow VR glasses. I recently went to try them out over here in London, with an uneasy thought in my mind: even with a lighter design than the Vive Cosmos series, how could this possibly be worth £1299 / $1099?
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Xbox Elite Series 2 Core Controller Is Discounted At Amazon
The Xbox Elite Series 2 Core controller is on sale for $116 at Amazon. Regularly priced at $130, this is a nice little discount for those who are looking for a new Xbox controller. All customers get free shipping, but, naturally, Prime members will get the controller sooner. The Elite Series 2 Core controller released last fall as a budget alternative to the standard Elite Series 2. However, the Core version does not come with any of the attachments, though they can be purchased separately.
This means you won’t get back paddles, four extra analog sticks to swap, a swappable D-pad, or the carrying case. Instead, the Core controller simply features the premium build of the Elite Series 2 controller–nicer sticks, trigger locks, an eight-way metal D-pad, and tactile handle grips.
If you decide you want the back paddles and other accessories, you can always purchase them separately. Microsoft is selling the Complete Component Pack for $60 Alternatively, you can pick and choose which swappable parts you want and buy them from third-party companies. For instance, you can get a nice set of back paddles for around $10 We’ve tested these third-party paddles and they feel good and work well.
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Vive XR Elite hands-on: HTC’s more portable answer to the Meta Quest Pro
Late last year, Meta expanded the limits of consumer mixed reality when it released the Quest Pro. And now at CES 2023, HTC is hitting back with its own take on a flagship headset with the Vive XR Elite.
Right away, the XR Elite matches a number of the Quest Pro’s highlight specs including support for 2K resolution (1920 x 1920) to each eye, a 90Hz refresh rate and full standalone operation. However, weighing 625 grams (versus 722 for the Quest Pro) and with a more comfortable headband, the XR Elite does an even better job of delivering a breezy portable VR/AR experience. Heck, HTC included the ability to remove its battery and stuff the lens inside a relatively compact canister for traveling. That said you’ll still have to find room in a bag or somewhere else to stash its power pack.
But it was only after I got a chance to test HTC’s headset across a number of demos that I really started to appreciate how much has been packed inside such a small package. Like the Quest Pro, the XR Elite features built-in hand-tracking, so you can easily and intuitively use gesture controls in games. And with support for full-color passthrough, you don’t feel like you’re isolated in the lonely void of VR.
Also, despite HTC opting for a slightly older Qualcomm XR2 chip (compared to the XR2+ chip in the Quest Pro) I was able to play games like Hubris (which originally launched on PSVR) without the need for help from a computer. Thankfully, you still have the option of tethering to a desktop when you want to run PC-based games or pairing with your phone to watch videos.
Granted, the XR Elite’s controllers still have a ring around the top, which makes them a bit more unwieldy than Meta’s Touch Pro gamepads. But that’s a trade-off I can live with. The two major drawbacks of the XR Elite compared to the Quest Pro is its lack of sophisticated eye and face-tracking, though HTC says it’s working on modules that should address those shortcomings.
Unfortunately, despite its high points, the XR Elite also shares a lot of the same flaws as the Quest Pro. Sure, starting at $1,099, it’s a bit cheaper than Meta’s $1,500 rival. But that’s still prohibitively expensive for anyone that’s not a bleeding edge enthusiast. But the bigger issue is that with all these new features, it still feels like there’s a lack of content that can take advantage of the headset’s capabilities. Most of the games I played were demos meant to showcase specific features instead of full-fledged experiences.
There are some annoying quirks too. While I found the XR Elite more comfortable than the Quest Pro, I had a harder time dialing in my IPD (interpupillary distance) and getting the optics as tack sharp as Meta’s headset. On top of that, as a side effect to HTC’s quest for streamlined portability, there’s so little space between the XR Elite’s lenses and your eyes, there isn’t enough room for people to keep their glasses on while using it. HTC tried to combat this by including diopters that can account for certain levels of nearsightedness, but those settings only go down to -6. So while I don’t wear glasses myself, the headset is a much harder sell for those who do.
Ultimately, this means that as impressive as HTC’s smaller and more portable MR headset is on a technical level, it still doesn’t do enough to convert metaverse skeptics into willing users, or at least not yet. But just like the Quest Pro, in a way, HTC had to build the Vive XR Elite for that future to even have a chance of becoming reality, both now and long after the headset goes on sale sometime in late February.