"Lenin" can't sleep at night after seeing what happened in the mortuary in Rostov. He told his friend that the dead were in a cauldron. You have to use a stick to make positive identifications. The unidentifiable need to be tested for genetic material. "I'm f---ing freaked out," he said.

A phone call made by a Russian soldier who is unknown but who has a grim experience was recounted by one of his friends in a phone call.

Yahoo News has not been able to verify the identities of the speakers. The anecdote is related to what Russian soldiers and their boosters have been saying on social media. The Russian military has been badly damaged by the multipronged offensives around Kherson and Kharkiv in the eastern part of the country.

A resident of Kherson greets a Ukrainian soldier
A resident of Kherson greets a Ukrainian soldier, July 25. (Ivan Chernichkin/Zaborona/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

There are videos showing alleged Russian war prisoners on Telegram channels. The government has confirmed the recapture of significant square miles of terrain, despite the media embargo on Kherson.

Several settlements and two villages were captured by the Southern Operational Command. There is a blue-and-gold standard on rooftops. Videos showing victorious Ukrainian troops with spoils of war left behind as the Russians retreated have been shared by online tracking sites.

Ukrainian drones are hitting targets of opportunity along the frontline, no longer being reserved for bigger quarries such as command-and-control centers, air defense systems, and logistics vehicles. Polish T 72M tanks and a variety of Western armored personnel carriers have been used by the Ukrainians. The new equipment arrived in the country in the months before these divisions were trained with it.

Western observers have been impressed by the speed with which Ukrainian forces are making progress. The surprise is that they have waged a simultaneous offensive hundreds of miles to the north in Kharkiv. The city is one of the largest in the country.

The aftermath of a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sept. 7. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

An officer with Russia's Federal Security Service posted on the Telegram social media site that Russian forces had been encircled in a city in the Kharkiv region. The Ukrainian attacks were praised for their speed and aggressiveness. The training of the Russian National Guard was poor and the Russian Air Force refrained from striking back.

A group of Russian national guard were trapped in the encirclement Grey Zone posted on Telegram that Russian units were leaving the area. The city will probably be surrendered.

The Russians seem to be trapped in the south.

The Dnipro River has rendered all modes of transportation useless for motorized traffic. The bridge was hit by U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Systems for weeks. Satellite footage shows that the road bridge over the Nova Kakhovka dam is no longer standing. A road and a pontoon bridge at Darivka have been destroyed. The Russian zone on the west bank of the Dnipro has been cut in half.

The push to regain Kherson and its provincial capital city, which was captured by Russia at the start of the invasion in February, has been telegraphed for months by Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainian artillerymen at the frontline in Kherson, July 15. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Kherson is a major administrative and transportation hub. Losing it gives Ukraine closer proximity to attack the peninsula occupied by the Kremlin since it was annexed by Russia. Similar plans were made by Russia to annex Kherson. The plans have been put on hold.

Moscow had always wanted to create a land corridor stretching from the Russian mainland to the unrecognized Russian-backed state of Transnistria in the south of the Ukranian peninsula. The economic prospects of a country that depends on maritime exports would be devastated by this.

The drumbeat about Kherson seems to have been a forecast of a military event. In order to fortify its defenses, Russia transferred battalion groups from other fronts to battle space where the Ukrainians were more confident fighting. It helps put into perspective the attacks on Russia's Saki Air Base.

According to one Western intelligence official, the destruction of half the Black Sea Fleet's naval air force prompted the Russians to pull their aviation farther away from Kherson.

Igor Strelkov, also known as Igor Girkin, the top military commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, at a press conference in Donetsk in 2014. (Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images)

The commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, and the first deputy chairman of the National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee, Mykhailo Zabrodskyi, wrote an essay about the future of Ukraine. It's possible that Ukraine has long-range, previously unpublicized weapons that can hit deep inside enemy territory.

According to the Economist, Ukrainian casualties in the south seem to be manageable. According to a doctor working in the main emergency unit, on average, 15 to 30 soldiers come in each day. It's not our worst nightmare.