Reuters / STRINGER
KEY POINTS
- Russia lost 560 military personnel in Ukraine between Sunday and Monday
- The Ukrainian military has recorded a total of 138,340 Russian army casualties
- Russian losses also included 3,283 tanks and 6,492 armored fighting vehicles
Russia suffered another 560 military casualties in its invasion of Ukraine, pushing its total losses in the conflict closer to 140,000, according to data provided by the Ukrainian military.
About 138,340 Russian army personnel have been killed since the war began nearly a year ago, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in its most recent casualty report released Monday.
In its report from the previous day, the military staff stated that total Russian combat losses at the time numbered 137,780.
Russia has also lost thousands of pieces of military equipment in the ongoing conflict, including 3,283 tanks, 6,492 armored fighting vehicles and 2,290 artillery systems, the latest Ukrainian data showed.
The past weeks have been the deadliest for Russian forces since the invasion’s initial phase, according to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense (MoD).
“Over the past two weeks, Russia has likely suffered its highest rate of casualties since the first week of the invasion,” the British ministry said in a Sunday intelligence briefing.
The mean average for the last seven days was 824 casualties per day, the ministry said, citing data provided by Ukraine’s general staff.
This figure was supposedly four times the rate reported between June and July of last year.
The rise in Russian losses is likely due to several factors, including Russia’s lack of trained personnel, coordination and resources across the front, according to the MoD.
Russia’s recent casualties were so high that they overwhelmed trackers, The Moscow Times reported.
“We simply don’t have enough time to process the information,” Maxim Litavrin, a data journalist with the independent Russian media site Mediazona, said.
Russia successfully mobilized 300,000 military reservists for the war in Ukraine, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed last October.
However, Russia has been accused of sending its newly drafted soldiers to the frontline poorly trained and ill-equipped.
“Russia is clearly treating them as cannon fodder,” a Ukrainian commander who is part of the territorial defense force of the besieged city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province said.
Russia previously employed “human wave” attacks around the settlement since at least October of last year, according to a report by The Telegraph.
The tactic, which was commonly used during World War I, involved Russian forces trying to flood the battlefield with a wave of densely packed soldiers sent directly toward the enemy line with the goal of overwhelming the opponent.
While human wave attacks reportedly helped in past offensives, Russia has cut back on the tactic, anecdotal evidence suggested.
