Russia Loses 850 Troops and 16 APVs in a Day: Ukraine

Russian forces in Ukraine lost 850 soldiers and more than a dozen armored personnel vehicles in the past day, according to Kyiv, as Russia bears down on Ukrainian defenses along several parts of the front line.

Moscow has lost a total of 411,550 fighters in the more than two years of all-out war, according to statistics published by Ukraine's military on Tuesday. Russia has now lost 12,494 armored personnel vehicles since February 2022, Kyiv added, including 16 vehicles in the previous 24 hours. Newsweek has emailed the Russian Defense Ministry for comment. Accurate casualty counts and equipment losses are notoriously difficult to pin down.

It is not entirely clear how Ukraine's military calculates its daily-updated figure for Russian personnel losses. However, if it includes overall casualties, as well as Russian fighters who are missing or died in non-combat circumstances, it is a "perfectly plausible" tally, Nick Reynolds, a research fellow for land warfare at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank, told Newsweek earlier this month.

In late January, Britain's armed forces minister, James Heappey, told U.K. lawmakers that Russia had sustained around 350,000 casualties in Ukraine. Tens of thousands of mercenaries serving with the Wagner Group—influential in operations to take the Donetsk city of Bakhmut in May 2023—were also killed and injured, Heappey said.

Russia does not publish a running tally of purported Ukrainian losses, but Moscow said on Monday that Ukraine had lost 1,175 soldiers in the previous 24 hours. Newsweek has reached out to the Ukrainian military for comment via email.

In August 2023, U.S. officials told The New York Times that around 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, with up to 120,000 wounded.

In a rare statement on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the more than two years of fighting.

"Each person is a very big loss for us," Zelensky said, but did not offer statistics on how many Ukrainian fighters had been injured. "It is very painful for us."

Casualties and equipment losses for both sides spike during drawn-out battles for key settlements. Tuesday's figures from Ukraine's military are a dip from recent weeks, during which Ukraine has repeatedly put daily Russian casualties at over 1,000 fighters as Moscow worked to encircle the Donetsk city of Avdiivka.

Russia captured the former Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka earlier this month after more than four months of fierce clashes.

During this time, Russia's forces lost more than 47,000 troops, Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavsky, the commander of Ukraine's Tavria grouping of forces covering Avdiivka, said earlier this month. Of these, around 17,000 soldiers were killed, Tavria spokesperson Dmytro Lykhovii later added.

Russian vehicle losses also quickly became a defining part of the Kremlin's attacks on Avdiivka.

The fall of Avdiivka has coincided with Russian pushes to the north and south along the front lines.

Moscow is carrying out a "cohesive multi-axis offensive operation" in northeastern Ukraine, the U.S. think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said last week.

In an update published on Monday, the think tank added that Russia had advanced south of the Moscow-held Luhansk city of Kreminna, as well as west of Bakhmut and west of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian troops pulled back from the village of Lastochkyne, west of Avdiivka, and set up new defensive positions to "prevent the enemy from advancing further in the western direction," Lykhovii said on Monday.

Fighting has also continued around the Zaporizhzhia village of Robotyne, the ISW think tank added on Monday, but there have been no confirmed advances in recent days.

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