Russia Loses 1,140 Troops, 32 Artillery Systems in One Day: Kyiv

Russian forces in Ukraine have lost 1,140 troops and 32 artillery systems in the past 24 hours, as the poor weather conditions fail to halt high casualty rates and equipment losses along the front line.

Moscow’s troops have now lost a total of 327,580 fighters in the 21 months of war, according to updated figures from the Ukrainian military on Wednesday. Russia losing 32 artillery systems in the past day brings Kyiv’s total losses to 7,908, per Ukraine’s figures.

Newsweek could not independently verify the battlefield losses and has reached out to Russia’s Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Moscow said on Tuesday that 385 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed over the past 24 hours, but did not provide a Russian estimate for total Ukrainian losses over the course of the full-scale war. The Ukrainian military has been contacted for comment.

“It is very difficult to determine casualties in an ongoing conflict since both sides will try to keep the data secret and inflate the number of adversary casualties,” Marina Miron, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, U.K, told Newsweek earlier this year.

In late October, figures from the Ukrainian military suggested Russia had surpassed 300,000 casualties since February 2022.

In mid-November, the U.K.’s armed forces minister, James Heappey, told British lawmakers that London believed around 302,000 Russian personnel had been killed or wounded since the start of all-out war. Losses of around 300,000 fighters is a “quite believable” figure, Frederik Mertens, an analyst with the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, told Newsweek at the time.

“Tens of thousands more have already deserted,” Heappey said, adding that it was not clear how many fighters in Russian private military companies, such as the Wagner Group, have been killed.

Losses are continuing to mount on both sides as Ukraine holds out against Russia’s onslaught around the Donetsk town of Avdiivka. Moscow’s forces began a concerted push around the town on October 10, launching several waves of attacks on the heavily fortified settlement that has spent most of the past decade on the front lines.

The past six weeks have “likely seen some of the highest Russian casualty rates of the war so far,” the British Defense Ministry said on Monday, adding that this was down to Russia’s operations around Avdiivka.

The assault on Avdiivka kicked off after months of Ukrainian counteroffensive efforts, which failed to make much of a dent in a largely static front line. The summer offensive came ahead of Ukraine’s muddy fall and freezing winter seasons, which have now settled in across the south and east of the country.

But “despite the challenging weather conditions, both Russian and Ukrainian forces are continuing ground attacks throughout Ukraine, albeit at a slightly slower pace due to snow and resulting poor visibility,” the U.S. think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said earlier this week.