cluster munitions killed the unprotected infantry and SC250 bombs smashed up the Soviet vehicles and T-34 tanks. Destroyed vehicles and thousands of dead and dying Red Army soldiers choked up the road and the nearby ravines. General Bobkin was killed by German machine gun fire and two more Soviet generals were killed in action on the 26th and 27th. Bock personally viewed the carnage from a hill near Lozovenka. In the face of determined German operations, Timoshenko ordered the official halt of all Soviet offensive manoeuvres on 28 May, while attacks to break out of the encirclement continued until 30 May. Nonetheless, less than one man in ten managed to break out of the "Barvenkovo mousetrap". Hayward gives 75,000 Soviets killed and 239,000 taken prisoner. Beevor puts Soviet prisoners at 240,000 (with the bulk of their armour), while Glantz—citing Krivosheev—gives a total of 277,190 overall Soviet casualties. Both tend to agree on a low German casualty count, with the most formative estimate being at 20,000 dead, wounded and missing. Regardless of the casualties, Kharkov was a major Soviet setback; it put an end to the successes of the Red Army during the winter counteroffensive. Analysis and conclusions Many authors have attempted to pinpoint the reasons for the Soviet defeat. Several Soviet generals have placed the blame on the inability of Stavka and Stalin to appreciate the Wehrmacht's military power on the Eastern Front after their defeats in the winter of 1941–1942 and in the spring of 1942. On the subject, Zhukov sums up in his memoirs that the failure of this operation was quite predictable, since the offensive was organised very ineptly, the risk of exposing the left flank of the Izium salient to German counterattacks being obvious on a map. Still according to Zhukov, the main reason for the stinging Soviet defeat lay in the mistakes made by Stalin, who underestimated the danger coming from German armies in the southwestern sector (as opposed to the Moscow sector) and failed to take steps to concentrate any substantial strategic reserves there to meet any potential German threat. Furthermore, Stalin ignored sensible advice provided by his own General Chief of Staff, who recommended organising a strong defence in the southwestern sector in order to be able to repulse any Wehrmacht attack. In his famous address to the Twentieth Party Congress about the crimes of Stalin, Khrushchev used the Soviet leader's errors in