Russia Lost 16,000 Armored Fighting Vehicles in Ukraine: Kyiv

Russia continues to pay a high cost in personnel and equipment in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to Kyiv's latest figures, which have marked a grim milestone in losses of armored protected/fighting vehicles (APVs).

In its update on Tuesday, Ukraine's General Staff said that, over the previous 24 hours, Russia lost 20 APVs, taking the total losses of the vehicles since the start of the war on February 24, 2022 to 16,000. Precise figures of losses are difficult to discern with both sides keen to keep the real totals under wraps. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment about the figures, which Kyiv describes as "very approximate."

In recent months, April 4, 2024 saw the highest daily losses of the vehicles. This total excludes main battle tanks (MBTs) but includes armored cars, assault guns, self-propelled artilleries, infantry fighting vehicles (IFV), and armored personnel carriers (APC).

The figures from Ukraine's General Staff put the monthly total of losses in May at 880, which was the highest since the record month of 889 in March 2022 at the start of the war. The highest daily total overall in the war was 96 APVs on March 15, 2022.

As of Tuesday, the tally by the Dutch open-source intelligence defence analysis website Oryx, which uses video or still imagery as evidence, put the tally of APV losses at 1,474. Of these, 1,067 were destroyed, 36 were damaged, 100 were abandoned and 271 were captured.

More than half these (892) were MT-LB Soviet-era amphibious, tracked armored fighting vehicles. Given the standard of evidence required, Oryx says that the amount of Russian equipment destroyed "is significantly higher than recorded here."

Meanwhile, Russia continues to suffer high troop losses in Ukraine, with Kyiv's figures on Tuesday listing that there had been 1,220 casualties the previous day, which includes those both killed and injured. It takes Kyiv's tally of Russian troop losses to 568,980 since the start of the war.

Russian army casualties are said to have risen sharply in recent months amid a failed renewed Russian offensive in the northeast of the Kharkiv region.

A joint project between independent Russian media outlet Mediazona and BBC Russia, confirmed on July 19 the names of 59,725 Russian soldiers who had been killed in the war—a rise of 1,518 since the outlets' last update at the start of the month.

This includes over 10,000 soldiers over the past six months. Among the dead are over 3,700 officers, with 437 holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or higher, while at least 11,933 Russian inmates have been killed on Ukraine's eastern front. This is according to the Mediazona and BBC Russia project, which says the real figures are likely to be higher.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC last week that 20,000 Russian troops had been killed during Russia's failed offensive in Kharkiv Oblast, although Newsweek has not independently verified this.

Russia has not updated its casualty numbers since the end of September 2022 when it was just under 6,000. Ukraine is also tight-lipped on its losses, although Zelensky said, in February, that 31,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed, while Western estimates have noted higher tallies.

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