Russia Loses 1020 Soldiers, 17 Tanks, 35 APVs in a Day: Kyiv

Russian forces in Ukraine lost more than 1,000 soldiers, 17 tanks and 35 armored personnel vehicles in the past day, Kyiv's military said on Tuesday. It is the latest indicator of the rising human and material cost of nearly two years of war.

Moscow has lost around 390,580 fighters since February 24, 2022, according to Ukraine's military. Updated totals published by Ukraine on Tuesday also say Russia has lost 6,365 tanks, and more than 11,850 armored personnel vehicles.

It is impossible to gain an accurate picture of the true scale of Russian losses. However, Western experts and governments broadly agreed that more than 300,000 of Moscow's troops have been killed or injured by the final months of 2023, and that figure will now have risen. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Both Moscow and Kyiv are tight-lipped about their own losses, rarely nodding to their own casualty counts or how much equipment has been destroyed.

"It is very difficult to determine casualties in an ongoing conflict since both sides will try to keep the data secret and inflate the number of adversary casualties," Marina Miron, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, U.K., told Newsweek in May 2023.

Russia's government said on Monday that Ukraine's military had lost around 885 soldiers in the previous 24 hours, adding Kyiv's armed forces had lost approximately 14,908 tanks and other armored combat vehicles since February 2022. Newsweek has emailed the Ukrainian military for comment.

In late December, the British Defense Ministry said the average number of Russian casualties sustained each day had risen by almost 300 per day throughout 2023 compared to the previous year.

If Russia's casualty count stays the same throughout 2024, Moscow will have sustained more than 500,000 casualties in the war by 2025, the U.K. government said.

London linked the increase in reported casualties to the "degradation of Russia's forces and its transition to a lower quality, high quantity mass army since the 'partial mobilisation' of reservists," back in September 2022.

In late January, the BBC's Russian service, along with independent outlet Mediazona, reported that civilian recruits who have joined the Russian military since February 2022 accounted for almost half of Russia's current combat losses. They are often sent into battle with outdated equipment, the two outlets reported.

Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov told countries gathered in support of Ukrainian military efforts in January that Russia loses "an average of 400 soldiers in exchange for one square kilometer [0.4 square mile] of land" along the front lines.

Casualties have soared since Russia launched its assault on the Donetsk town of Avdiivka, northwest of the regional capital, Donetsk City, in early October. Avdiivka has been dubbed a "meat grinder," a label referring to long periods of bitter fighting with heavy casualty counts.

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