Your tactical update on Ukraine (June 14)

It has been 111 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. On Tuesday, the majority of the fighting again took place in and around Severodonetsk as the Russian military is pushing hard to capture the key city.

Fighting in the Donbas

The fighting in and around Severodonetsk continues. The Russian forces have destroyed the last bridge that leads outside of the city but have failed to encircle the town. The bridge that connected Severodonetsk to Lysychansk was the main supply line of the Ukrainian forces fighting in the city.

“Russian forces pushed Ukrainian defenders from the center of Severodonetsk and reportedly destroyed the remaining bridge from Severodonetsk to Lysychansk on June 13, but Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces are not encircled in the city. Russian forces carried out unsuccessful ground assaults in an attempt to sever Ukrainian ground lines of communications (GLOCs) near Popasna and Bakhmut. Russian forces launched unsuccessful offensive operations southeast of Izyum and north of Slovyansk, and are likely setting conditions for an assault on Siversk and northwestern Ukrainian GLOCs to Lysychansk,” the Institute for the Study of War assessed in its latest estimate of the conflict.

The Russian forces are starting to tighten the noose in the Donbas but the Ukrainian defenses are still holding on.

The Russian military is also pressuring the Ukrainian forces in the vicinity of Kharkiv in an attempt to push them back and deny the Ukrainian artillery targets within Russia.

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 600 Russian tanks; this assessment has been confirmed by the British Ministry of Defense.

The same independent verification exists for most of the other Ukrainian claims. Only 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 20,000 fatalities in the war so far.

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

32,500 Russian troops killed (approximately three times that number wounded and captured)
3,503 armored personnel carriers destroyed
2,473 vehicles and fuel tanks
1,434 tanks
721 artillery pieces
588 tactical unmanned aerial systems
213 fighter, attack, and transport jets
226 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS)
179 attack and transport helicopters
125 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses
96 anti-aircraft batteries
53 special equipment platforms, such as bridging equipment
13 boats and cutters
four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems

Over the past weeks, the rate of Russian casualties has slowed down significantly despite continuous pressure and offensive operations in the Donbas. This suggests two things: First, the Russian commanders are taking a more cautious approach to their offensive operations, fully utilizing combined arms warfare to achieve their goals; and second, the Ukrainian forces are running out of combat power or ammunition — and this is expected after over three months of war against the Russian military. Recent reports from the ground suggest that both of these factors are true, and that the fatigue of warfare is catching up on both sides.

For most of the last month, 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 went on, most of the heavy fighting shifted toward the direction of Bakhmut, southeast of Slovyansk, around Severodonetsk, a key Ukrainian town, and Lyman.

Then the location of the heaviest casualties shifted again westwards toward the area of Zaporizhzhia —where one of Europe’s largest nuclear plants is located — as a result of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in and around the area.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian forces inflicted the heaviest casualties in the vicinity of Bakhmut, where the Russian forces are trying to advance and cut off Severodonetsk from the rear.

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.