Russia continues its localized assaults in Ukraine but with few results

It has been 364 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. On Wednesday, one day before the one-year mark of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war has no end in sight.

The fighting goes on

In the east, the Russian military continues to launch localized assaults northwest of Svatove and on the outskirts of Kreminna in an attempt to push the Ukrainian forces back. However, the Ukrainian military persists with its own small counteroffensive operations in the direction of Kreminna. This back-and-forth has been going on for the better part of five months and has produced few results for either side but many casualties.

In the Donbas, the Russian forces continue to make minimal gains in and around Bakhmut, but the Ukrainian defenses continue to hold despite the increasing pressure.

In the south, the situation hasn’t changed since November. The Russian forces continue to bolster their fortifications on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in an anticipation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The battlefield on February 21, according to the Institute for the Study of War. (ISW)

Russian casualties

Every day, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is providing an update on its claimed Russian casualties. These numbers are official figures and haven’t been separately verified.

However, Western intelligence assessments and independent reporting corroborate, to a certain extent, the Ukrainian casualty claims. For example, the Oryx open-source intelligence research page has visually verified the destruction or capture of close to 1,700 Russian tanks (which amounts to more tanks than the combined armor capabilities of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom) and more than 8,300 weapon systems of all types; this assessment has been confirmed by the British Ministry of Defense.

The same independent verification exists for most of the other Ukrainian claims. Recently, the Pentagon acknowledged that the Russian military has lost thousands of combat vehicles of all types, including over 1,000 tanks, and dozens of fighter jets and helicopters.

In November, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley shared the U.S. military’s assessment that the Russian military has lost way more than 100,000 troops so far in the war. But U.S. officials revised this assessment in February. According to U.S. intelligence, Russia has lost almost 200,000 troops killed or wounded in the conflict so far.

Yet, proper casualty figures are still hard to compute and verify given the fog and friction of war.

As of Wednesday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is claiming the following Russian casualties:

145,060 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
6,569 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed
5,212 vehicles and fuel tanks
3,334 tanks
2,345 artillery pieces
2,026 tactical unmanned aerial systems
873 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
471 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
299 fighter, attack, and transport jets
287 attack and transport helicopters
243 anti-aircraft batteries
226 special equipment platforms, such as bridging equipment
18 boats and cutters
four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems

On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces continued to inflict the heaviest in the direction of Bakhmut, which is located in the south of the Donbas, and along the Kreminna-Svatove line in the east.

The stated goal of the Russian military for the renewed offensive in the east is to establish full control over the pro-Russian breakaway territories of Donetsk and Luhansk and create and maintain a land corridor between these territories and the occupied Crimea.

Feature Image: A Ukrainian 2S3 Akatsiya 152mm self-propelled gun in the east. (OSINTtechnical Twitter)