The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine released a photo in which two police officers examine the huge number of Russian rockets that have been launched over Kharkiv since the beginning of the war.

“The hiding place of Russian missiles that have been destroying this city for the past 9 months. We couldn’t even imagine something like this,” said the message to the photo published on Twitter by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

Russia has continuously bombed the northeastern front in Kharkiv to block Ukrainian forces and prevent them from being used for counterattacks in other regions, the British Ministry of Defense reports, Reuters writes.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, which is located approximately 15 km from the Russian front line, has been the target of constant brutal attacks since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as it is within range of most of the Russian artillery.

Ukrainian journalist Denys Kazansky drew a parallel between the photo of 2022 and footage from France and Belgium in 1916 during the First World War.

The lightning counteroffensive of the Ukrainian troops in September, which exceeded all expert expectations, caused the catastrophic collapse of the Russian troops in the Kharkiv region, who were either destroyed, captured in battles, or retreated in disarray, leaving weapons and ammunition behind.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region hindered Russian forces and caused the collapse of the Russian axis in the north of Donbas, reports the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Russian troops did not go on a controlled retreat and hurried to escape from the southeast of the Kharkiv region in order to get out of the encirclement around the city of Izyum.

In early September, Ukrainian forces penetrated Russian lines up to 70 kilometers deep in some places and recaptured more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory in five days, more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations since April.

The bill for the war that Russia has paid in the last nine months

In the nine months since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has spent about 82 billion dollars in support of the war. This amount is a quarter of the annual budget of the Russian Federation, according to Forbes Ukraine’s analysis.

Forbes Ukrainian journalists traced the nine months after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of their country and found that Russia used between 10,000 and 50,000 rounds a day during the conflict, and the average cost of a Soviet-caliber round is about $1,000.

Thus, Moscow’s expenses for the supply of artillery alone amount to more than 5.5 billion dollars.

The Russian military also fired more than 4,000 missiles at Ukraine. The average cost of one Russian missile is 3 million dollars.

A significant amount of equipment lost by the Russian Federation was given to the Ukrainian armed forces as trophies during their chaotic withdrawal, worth about $2 billion, excluding small arms and ammunition.

Russia’s total revenue in 2021 was $340 billion, meaning Moscow has already spent a quarter of its budget on what Russian President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation.”

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