Russia Suffers Highest Tank and Troop Losses in Weeks: Kyiv

Russian forces continue to pay a high price for Moscow's full-scale invasion in terms of personnel and equipment, according to Kyiv, the latest estimate of which shows the biggest troop losses since May and the highest tank losses since July.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that over the previous 24 hours, Russia had lost 1,440 troops. This takes the total number since the start of the war to 640,920, according to Kyiv which says its tally is "approximate" and includes those who are both killed and injured.

The latest figure is the highest figure since May 27, when it recorded 1,460 Russian losses. While the numbers are not broken down into locations, the tally comes during Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk region and Moscow's push in Ukraine's Donetsk region for the logistics hub of Pokrovsk.

Kyiv's figures also showed that over the previous day, Russia had lost 21 main battle tanks (MBTs)—the highest since July 25 for a war total of 8,746. As of Saturday, Russian tank losses according to the tracking website Oryx were at 3,387. The site counts Russian equipment losses using still or video images as proof. This, it says, means that the real number of losses is likely to be much higher.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.

Getting an accurate number of troop losses is tricky as both sides do not release official estimates and Moscow has not updated its death toll since September 2022 when it said just under 6,000 of its soldiers had been killed.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that 200,000 Russian troops had been killed and 600,000 wounded, citing unnamed Western intelligence estimates.

The WSJ report also noted Ukrainian losses, while considerably lower, stood at 80,000 killed and 400,000 wounded.

Kyiv has not updated its tally of losses since Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said in February that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed.

A tally by the independent Mediazona news website and the BBC's Russian service has found that more than 70,000 Russian soldiers have been confirmed killed in Ukraine.

The tally, published Friday, draws on open-source information such as official statements, newspaper obituaries and social media posts, so the outlets said that their figure is likely to be a large underestimate.

The outlets said that one in five of those Russians killed had signed a contract with the Russian army of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya) after the war had started, and more than half were not affiliated with the military before February 24, 2022.

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