Ukrainians threatened Russian forces with humiliating encirclement in the east

It has been 217 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. On Wednesday, the Ukrainian military continued with its counteroffensives in the east and south, making the most progress in the east and threatening Russian units with encirclement.

The fight for Lyman

The city of Lyman seems ready to fall to the Ukrainians. The Russian position has become precarious as the Ukrainian forces have advanced to the southeast and northeast of the city and threaten to launch a concentric attack that would encircle Lyman and trap any Russian forces in a cauldron. In the absence of robust reinforcements, the only option for the Russian military is to withdraw from Lyman and defend farther east.

The situation in the east and around Lyman where the Ukrainian forces are threatening to encircle sizeable Russian units. (ISW)

In the south, in Kherson, the Ukrainian forces continue to use long-range strikes to target and take Russian logistical and command and control functions.

In the Donbas, the Russian forces continue to bash their head against the Ukrainian defenses around Bakhmut but with little success.

“In terms of Russian force posture, broadly speaking, without getting into a detailed operational update, no, major shifts other than we continue to see, particularly in the Donbas region, the Russians’ attempt to conduct offensive operations in that area, with Ukraine successfully holding the line,” Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder said during a press briefing on Tuesday.

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 1,100 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.

destroyed Russian Mi-35 helicopter in Ukraine — A destroyed Russian M-35 helicopter. (File photo)

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.

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:

58,150 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
4,889 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed
3,742 vehicles and fuel tanks
2,312 tanks
1,381 artillery pieces
989 tactical unmanned aerial systems
262 fighter, attack, and transport jets
331 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
224 attack and transport helicopters
242 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
175 anti-aircraft batteries
131 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.

A Ukrainian tank in the Donbas in 2014. (Wikimedia Commons via UTR news)

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 casualties north of Donetsk City, where the Russian military persists in launching futile assaults on the Ukrainian defenses, and in the direction of Kramatorsk, which is located in the central Donbas.

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 soldiers prepare to search a building. (File photo)

Author

Stavros Atlamazoglou

Greek Army veteran (National service with 575th Marines Battalion and Army HQ). Johns Hopkins University. You will usually find him on the top of a mountain admiring the view and wondering how he got there.

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