Russian attacks and Ukrainian counterattacks

It has been 231 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. On Wednesday, the Ukrainian forces continued with their counteroffensives in the south and east of the country, while the Russian military is battering its head in the Donbas trying to capture Bakhmut.

The war in Ukraine

In the east, the Ukrainian forces are steadily pushing toward the direction of Svatove from the north and the south in a two-prong advance.

Meanwhile, in the south, the Ukrainian military is conducting ground assaults in the north and west of Kherson, while using long-range strikes to target Russian military and logistical targets throughout the Kherson province in an attempt to weaken the Russian defenses further.

To the north, according to the Institute for the Study of War, it looks unlikely that Russia will also attack Ukraine from Belarus.

“The Russian Federation is likely extracting ammunition and other materiel from Belarusian storage bases, which is incompatible with the notion that Russian forces are setting conditions for a ground attack against Ukraine from Belarus,” the Institute for the Study of War assessed in its latest operational update on the war.

The situation in the east where the Ukrainian forces are advancing toward Svatove. (ISW)

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 1,200 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.

Ukraine forces running on an armored personnel carrier. (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:

63,380 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
5,181 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed
3,927 vehicles and fuel tanks
2,505 tanks
1,507 artillery pieces
1,129 tactical unmanned aerial systems
268 fighter, attack, and transport jets
355 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
235 attack and transport helicopters
315 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
182 anti-aircraft batteries
136 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.

Ukrainian troops in Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine in 2020. The city is controlled by Ukrainian forces. (File photo)

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 in the direction of Kramatorsk, which is located in the central Donbas, and in the vicinity of Avdiivka, and close to Kryvyi Rih.

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: Ukrainian troops in the Donbas in 2014. (Wikimedia Commons)