Russian forces in Ukraine lost 780 soldiers, 10 tanks and more than 20 armored personnel vehicles (APVs) in the past day, according to Kyiv's military, as fighting rages on ahead of anticipated offensives in the coming months.
Moscow's armed forces have now lost a total of 440,750 troops since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to updated figures published by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Thursday.
By Kyiv's count, Russia has now lost 6,924 tanks and 13,258 APVs.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
Casualty counts and equipment losses in war are notoriously opaque. Western experts suggest both Kyiv's and Moscow's reported losses are higher than the true figure. Neither side regularly offers updated statistics on their own losses, but in late February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the more than two years of fighting.
If Ukraine's tally 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 in February.
Casualty counts typically spike during drawn-out battles, such when Russia launched its offensive on the strategic Donetsk city of Avdiivka in October. Moscow has controlled the settlement since mid-February.
Earlier in March, the British government said Russia's monthly casualty count throughout February reached the highest point in the two years of full-scale war.
Russia has likely sustained more than 335,000 casualties in this time, London said. This "almost certainly reflects Russia's commitment to mass and attritional warfare," the U.K. Defense Ministry said.
Kyiv is losing its own resources in the war. Russia's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that Ukraine had lost 15,614 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, plus 8,546 field artillery guns and mortars, since February 2022. Like Ukraine's figures on purported Russian losses, these are very difficult to very to verify.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said last week that Ukraine had sustained approximately 71,000 casualties since January 2024. This was very similar to the Russian casualty figures put forward by Ukraine's military—Kyiv's tally at the time put Russian casualties at approximately 72,000 since the start of the year.
Although to be treated with caution, the figures do indicate the scale of losses on both sides, heading towards the spring and summer months expected to usher in new offensives. Kyiv has warned that Moscow is likely to start a new offensive in late May or during the summer, and that it is amassing new troops for the effort.
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Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more
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