Ukraine is setting the stage for the counteroffensive that could change the war

It has been 404 days since the Russian invasion began. On Monday, the Russian military is still in search of an operational breakthrough in Ukraine. At this point, however, it is extremely unlikely that the Russian forces can achieve anything before the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Ukrainian Counteroffensive

For weeks now, Kyiv has been setting the conditions for a large-scale counteroffensive. Ukrainian officials have suggested that the counteroffensive will take place sometime in the late spring or early summer. But the precise  time and place of the offensive operation remains unknown.

Besides the advantage of surprise—if deception succeeds—the Ukrainian military will also have the advantage of fresh, mobile reserves equipped with Western weapon systems. The Ukrainian military is set to receive more than 150 Western main battle tanks, including Challenger 2, Leopard 2, and Leopard 1 tanks, in addition to hundreds of infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. These weapon systems could make the difference, especially against the increasingly obsolete Russian arsenal.

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 March, U.K. Defense Minister Ben Wallace shared a Western intelligence estimate that assesses that the Russian forces have lost more than 220,000 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:

• 175,160 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
• 6,993 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed
• 5,553 vehicles and fuel tanks
• 3,619 tanks
• 2,694 artillery pieces
• 2,262 tactical unmanned aerial systems
• 911 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
• 526 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
• 306 fighter, attack, and transport jets
• 291 attack and transport helicopters
• 280 air defense systems
• 298 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.