It has been 380 days since the Russian invasion began. On Friday, the Russian forces continue to advance in and around the town of Bakhmut.
Russian assault in the Donbas
In the past 24 hours, the Russian forces have shifted their weight to the north of Bakhmut. Wagner Group mercenaries captured the small settlement of Dubovo-Vasylivka, around three miles to the north of the embattled town. The Russian forces are likely trying to expand the radius of their assault against Bakhmut to determine if they could launch an enveloping operation from lesser defended areas.
In the town itself, the Russian forces have stopped advancing. It is not clear if this is a tactical pause after the recent advances into the northern suburbs of the town or if the Russian forces have exhausted their momentum.
In the east, the Russian forces continues to launch ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line of contact. The forested terrain is preventing both sides from leveraging any mechanized advantages that they might have.
In the south, the situation remains the same. The Russian military continues to improve its fortifications, while the Ukrainians are using long-range fires to take out targets of opportunity and also disrupt the Russian defenses.
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 more than 1,800 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 Friday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is claiming the following Russian casualties:
- 156,990 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
- 6,742 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed
- 5,337 vehicles and fuel tanks
- 3,448 tanks
- 2,475 artillery pieces
- 2,107 tactical unmanned aerial systems
- 907 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
- 491 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
- 304 fighter, attack, and transport jets
- 288 attack and transport helicopters
- 256 anti-aircraft batteries
- 240 special equipment platforms, such as bridging equipment
- 18 boats and cutters
- four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems
On Friday, 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.
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