Russia declares partial mobilization following its poor performance in Ukraine

It has been 210 days since the Russian invasion began. On Wednesday, the war in Ukraine seems to be getting an unwanted extension as Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization and a commitment to winning.

The ground level

But on the tactical level, the Russian military is doing anything but winning. The Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and the south have thrown the Russian forces off balance, and the Russian military is losing ground, men, and materiel with every passing day.

On the other end, the Ukrainians seem to be limited only by the amount of security assistance they receive from the West. Weapon systems such as the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS), M777 155mm Howitzer, and AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile), among others, have made it possible for the Ukrainian forces to go on the offensive and gain the strategic initiative.

On the strategic level, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared partial mobilization and vowed to even use nuclear weapons in the event that the territorial integrity of Russia is threatened by the war. Whether the mobilization of around 300,000 men will help or hinder the Russian campaign in Ukraine remains to be seen.

Russian casualties

Every day, the Ukrainian military is providing an update on their 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 more than 1,100 Russian tanks (which amounts to more tanks than the combined armor capabilities of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom) and more than 5,300 military vehicles 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.

Furthermore, more recent reports that are citing Western intelligence officials indicate that the Russian military has suffered up to 50,000 casualties (killed and wounded) in the war so far.

In the summer, Sir Tony Radakin, the British Chief of the Defence Staff, recently told the BBC that the West understands that more than 50,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the conflict thus far. If we were to take the Ukrainian figures as accurate, the number mentioned by Sir Radakin is on the low side of the spectrum.

A destroyed Russian ZSU anti-aircraft vehicle. (File photo)

Yet, it is very hard to verify the actual numbers unless one is on the ground. However, after adjusting for the fog of war and other factors, the Western official numbers are fairly close to the Ukrainian claims.

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

55,110 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
4,748 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed
3,610 vehicles and fuel tanks
2,227 tanks
1,340 artillery pieces
932 tactical unmanned aerial systems
253 fighter, attack, and transport jets
318 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
217 attack and transport helicopters
239 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
168 anti-aircraft batteries
125 special equipment platforms, such as bridging equipment
15 boats and cutters
four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems

For most of May, the Russian military suffered the greatest casualties around the Slovyansk, Kryvyi Rih, and Zaporizhzhia areas, reflecting the heavy fighting that was going on there. As the days and weeks went on, most of the heavy fighting shifted toward the direction of Bakhmut, southeast of Slovyansk, around Severodonetsk, Lyman, and Lysychansk.

Tanks abandoned by the Russian military during its retreat from Izium in September. Russian forces reportedly committed war crimes in the city with a number of mass graves being discovered. Russia had captured Izium in late March. (Ukrainian Ministry of Defense)

Then the location of the heaviest casualties shifted again westwards toward the area of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — where one of Europe’s largest nuclear plants is located — as a result of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in and around the area.

Then, the concentration of casualties once more shifted back to the Donbas, especially in and around Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, the two urban centers the Russians managed to capture in July. For most of August, the heaviest fighting took place in the Donbas, where the Russian forces unsuccessfully tried to breach the Ukrainian defenses and capture the Donetsk province. But lately, most of the fighting has shifted to the south where the Ukrainian military is mounting a major counteroffensive to recapture Kherson. It is now there, on the southern front, that the Russian military is suffering the heaviest casualties.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces continued to inflict the heaviest casualties north of Donetsk City where the Russian military persists in launching futile assaults on the Ukrainian defenses.

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.

Author

Stavros Atlamazoglou

Greek Army veteran (National service with 575th Marines Battalion and Army HQ). Johns Hopkins University. You will usually find him on the top of a mountain admiring the view and wondering how he got there.

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