Watch: Russian armored personnel carrier destroyed in Russian retreat

It has been 250 days since the Russian invasion began. On Monday, the war continues to go poorly for the Russian military, which is under fire all across Ukraine.

Chaotic retreat

In Kherson in the south, the Russian forces continue to retreat from the western bank of the Dnipro River with the Ukrainian military hot on their heels.

Footage from the ground in Kherson shows the chaotic condition of the Russian forces. A video that came out on Twitter shows a Russian defensive position being evacuated in a rush as Ukrainian force approach. The Russian troops scurry on an armored personnel carrier and speed in the direction of friendly units before crashing the vehicle and likely suffering several casualties.

Russian troops chaotically flee from the Kherson region, trying to evacuate wounded soldiers.

They crash their BTR, presumably with many casualties. pic.twitter.com/oOg8VfWAFo
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 30, 2022

In places, it seems that the Russian command and control has broken down and the Ukrainians reign supreme tactically.

Meanwhile, in the east, the Ukrainian forces made some gains toward the direction of Kreminna, which leads to the key logistical hub of Svatove.

There is no end in sight for the war as the Russian leadership continues to throw men and weapon systems into the grinder.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin will most likely try to continue conventional military operations in Ukraine to hold currently occupied territories, gain new ground, and set conditions for the collapse of Western support for Ukraine that he likely expects to occur this winter,” the Institute for the Study of War assessed in its latest operational update on the war in Ukraine.

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 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 Monday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is claiming the following Russian casualties:

71,820 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
5,485 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed
4,128 vehicles and fuel tanks
2,686 tanks
1,728 artillery pieces
1,413 tactical unmanned aerial systems
275 fighter, attack, and transport jets
383 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
253 attack and transport helicopters
352 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
197 anti-aircraft batteries
154 special equipment platforms, such as bridging equipment
16 boats and cutters
four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems

Captured Russian tanks by Ukraine. (Wikimedia Commons)

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.

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 Monday, Ukrainian forces continued to inflict the heaviest in the direction of Bakhmut, which is located in the south of the Donbas, and Kramatorsk, which is located in the central of the 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: A Russian armored personnel carrier in 2016. (Photo by Vitaly V. Kuzmin/Wikimedia Commons)

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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