Russian forces battling in Ukraine lost 1,250 soldiers, 19 tanks and 37 artillery systems in a single day, according to Kyiv’s military.
Moscow has lost 346,070 troops in almost 22 months of all-out war in the country, the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in an update on Sunday. The Kremlin’s fighters also lost 37 artillery systems in 24 hours, Kyiv said, adjusting its tally of total losses to 8,137.
Newsweek could not independently verify the General Staff’s figures, and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
Although it is difficult to judge battlefield losses, the figures from Ukraine’s military are the latest indication of the staggering human cost and equipment losses being sustained in the war-torn country.
Alexander NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images
Western analysts broadly suggest Ukraine’s tallies are likely close to the true number of Russian equipment losses, although there is some variation in casualty figures and death tolls.
Russia does not provide a total for reported Ukrainian losses, but Moscow’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that Kyiv’s armed forces had lost 490 soldiers in the past day. Newsweek could not verify this and has reached out to Ukraine’s military via email for comment.
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that nearly 90 percent of Russia’s pre-war personnel were now dead or injured, citing a source familiar with a declassified U.S. intelligence document. This amounts to around 315,000 Russian troops either killed or injured in the many months of casualty-heavy warfare.
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 the war.
Russia is now frequently losing more than 1,000 soldiers in a day, according to Kyiv’s statistics, with casualty figures consistently high as Moscow slowly encircles the Donetsk town of Avdiivka.
The Kremlin launched an offensive on the industrial town, which has spent years on the front line, on October 10. Between then and late November, Russia racked up “some of the highest Russian casualty rates of the war so far,” the British Defense Ministry said last month.
Russia has taken 13,000 casualties in the weeks of pushes around Avdiivka, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told CNN earlier this week.
On Sunday, the Ukrainian military said Russia was ploughing on with attempts to encircle Avdiivka, but repeated that Kyiv’s soldiers were “steadfastly holding the defense.”
Ukraine “successfully repelled” 30 Russian attacks along the front line around Avdiivka, the General Staff said. Russia did not mention the town in its daily rundown on Saturday.
Russian troops have advanced around the industrial zone to the southeast of the town in recent days, according to U.S. think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.