It has been 271 days since the Russian invasion began. On Monday, the Ukrainian military is upping the pressure in the east.
The Road to Svatove
The Ukrainian military is pushing hard in the east. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, since the start of the counteroffensive in September, the Ukrainian forces have liberated 12 settlements in the Luhansk province, which is part of the Donbas. The Ukrainian counteroffensive has liberated hundreds of square miles of territory in the Kharkiv and Luhansk provinces and is now trying to reach the key logistical hub of Svatove.
The weather conditions are getting worse as the first snows of the Ukrainian winter have begun to fall, making offensive combat operations that much more difficult and increasing the logistical strain on the two militaries.
But to reach Svatove, the Ukrainian forces have to first liberate Kreminna, and that is where most of the fighting is taking place.
Nothing has really changed in the south and the Donbas. In the former, the Ukrainian forces are using long-range fires to disrupt, degrade, and destroy the Russian lines of communication and supply on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, setting the conditions for eventual offensive operations in the region.
In the Donbas, the Russian forces keep attacking Bakhmut and Avdiivka but have not achieved anything significant but have lost considerable forces and resources in the process.
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 1,400 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 more than 100,000 casualties (killed and wounded) in the war so far.
In the summer, Sir Tony Radakin, the British Chief of the Defence Staff, had 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.
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 more than 100,000 troops so far in the war.
Related: How Ukrainian soldiers are using drones to fight Russians on the ground
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 Monday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is claiming the following Russian casualties:
- 84,600 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
- 5,822 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed
- 4,378 vehicles and fuel tanks
- 2,892 tanks
- 1,870 artillery pieces
- 1,537 tactical unmanned aerial systems
- 278 fighter, attack, and transport jets
- 393 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
- 261 attack and transport helicopters
- 480 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
- 209 anti-aircraft batteries
- 161 special equipment platforms, such as bridging equipment
- 16 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, Avdiivka, which located farther to the south of Bakhmut, and Lyman 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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Ukraine has no pressure to put on anyone, except for more hush money from the biden RICO operation. The second the U.S. runs out of monopoly money, the ashkeNAZI’s, and khazarian mafia will move on to another location, and start another deep state, false flag operation.