There's a great thread from a Ukrainian combat engineer who claims to have scouted the river crossing. I urge everyone to read this:
Key takeaways:
- This is devolved decision-making like a NATO military. This was probably a Lieutenant or Captain who recon'd the area with a laser rangefinder and a small forward observation team.
- Shows high technical and tactical competence. He was able to figure out where they were likely to cross, what capabilities would be required to cross and what indicators the scouts had to look for, even in a degraded or confused battlespace.
- Demonstrates high discipline that they waited until the Russians had sufficiently set up and moved enough forces to the bridge.
- Shows Russian incompetence. They seem to move around the battlefield in a manner that doesn't anticipate Ukrainian long range fires (artillery or drone strikes). They seem to have bunched up an entire battalion in the kill zone that the approaches to the river crossing. They don't seem to have done any scouting ahead to anticipate Ukrainian fires.
The supposed 1500 KIA estimate is probably a bit high. But even if the Ukrainians killed a tenth of that, it's absolutely incredible they were able to kill a battalion's worth armour in one encounter with zero Ukrainian losses.
I don't see how the Russians can keep up this kind of mismatch in competence, even with their higher tolerance for casualties. At a certain point, they will not have enough troops to conduct any offence. And by July, if they don't get massive reinforcements, they won't have enough troops and vehicles to hold the territory they have. Worse yet, the more casualties they take, the higher the capability mismatch in favour of Ukraine, enabling the Ukrainians to inflict an ever spiraling cycle of higher and higher casualties. Eventually, the Russian Army could just collapse in the field with Russians starting to surrender or desert en masse. Kinda like the Iraqis in the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq.