Russian forces battling it out in harsh winter conditions in Ukraine have lost more than 1,100 fighters in a single day, along with nearly 20 tanks and 26 armored personnel carriers, Kyiv has said.
Russia lost 1,120 troops in the past 24 hours, Kyiv’s military said on Thursday, revising their total for Russian personnel losses since February 2022 to 336,230 soldiers.
Russian equipment losses throughout Wednesday also included 18 tanks, 26 armored personnel carriers and 21 artillery systems, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military said in an operational update posted to social media.
Although Newsweek could not independently verify the General Staff’s figures, they are the latest indication of the heavy toll 21 months of war and attrition is continuing to take on Russia’s military. Despite Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive, the front lines snaking through Russian-annexed territories have largely remained static, with particularly high losses and casualties reported around the Donetsk city of Avdiivka since early October.
SERGEY VENYAVSKY/AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine’s losses are likely to be painful, too. Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that Ukraine had lost 750 fighters along the contact line over the previous 24 hours. Around the northeastern city of Kupiansk, Ukraine lost two tanks and four armored personnel carriers in the past day, Russia said on Thursday.
According to the Ukrainian General Staff, Russia’s military has lost 5,618 tanks since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It has also lost 10,482 armored personnel carriers, Kyiv said. Russia countered on Thursday with an update on reported Ukrainian vehicle losses, saying Kyiv had lost 13,870 tanks and other armored combat vehicles throughout the months of warfare.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry and Ukrainian General Staff for comment via email.
Experts have previously suggested to Newsweek that Ukraine’s figures for Russian losses are likely to be roughly accurate.
However, “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 told Newsweek earlier this year.
Over the weekend, the U.S. think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said that poor weather was continuing to hold up both Moscow’s and Kyiv’s combat operations across the entire front line.
However, the adverse conditions had “not completely halted” all operations, the ISW evaluated on Saturday.
But in lieu of large-scale mechanized maneuvers more suited to summer conditions, Ukraine was preparing for a winter onslaught of Russian missiles and strike drones.
And the ominous predictions are not misplaced. Ukraine’s air force said on Thursday that it had shot down 15 out of 18 Iranian-designed Shahed strike drones launched from Crimea overnight, aimed at the western Ukrainian region of Khmelnytskyi and the southern port area around Odesa. The previous day, Russia had launched 48 Shahed drones at Ukraine, Kyiv said.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.