It has been 383 days since the Russian invasion began. On Monday, the Ukrainian military is still defending Bakhmut.
Situation in Bakhmut
Despite a push inside Bakhmut, the Russian forces have failed to capture the town. In the past few days, the Russian military and Wagner Group private military company managed to capture significant swaths of Bakhmut. Now, the Russian forces are in control of the eastern part of the town, with the Ukrainians defending from the western. The Bakhmutka River divides the two sides.
Russian forces have advanced to the north and south of the town as well, and the Ukrainian lines of communication and supply that lead into Bakhmut are under fire. Despite the precarious situation, the Ukrainian military continues to defend the town and attrite Russian forces. And it seems that it has been quite effective on the latter. In a recent estimate, the British Ministry of Defense assessed that the Wagner Group alone has lost between 20,000 and 30,000 troops in the battle for Bakhmut so far.
In the east, the fighting along the Kreminna-Svatove line of contact continues. The Russian forces have been trying to push the Ukrainians back from the outskirts of Kreminna for weeks but without much success. Artillery fire is taking a toll on both sides and on civilians too.
In the south, the situation remains almost the same. The Russian military continues to expand its fortifications in anticipation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
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 Monday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is claiming the following Russian casualties:
- 159,800 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
- 6,774 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed
- 5,354 vehicles and fuel tanks
- 3,474 tanks
- 2,503 artillery pieces
- 2,109 tactical unmanned aerial systems
- 907 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
- 493 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
- 304 fighter, attack, and transport jets
- 289 attack and transport helicopters
- 259 air defense systems
- 251 special equipment platforms, such as bridging equipment
- 18 boats and cutters
- four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems
On Monday, 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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