Russian Losses Fueled by New Units Untrained in 'Basic' Weaponry: Ukraine

Russian forces in Ukraine are seeing "significant" manpower losses because of their lack of training with "basic" types of weapons, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Thursday.

In an operational update on Facebook, the General Staff detailed what it said were some of the issues facing Russia's troops in the Ukraine war. These included a lack of material and technical support for Russian units taking part in "hostilities" on Ukrainian territory. In the southern Kherson region, for example, there have been increases in theft and looting by Russian soldiers who don't have access to warm clothes, the update said.

It added that mobilized Russian troops who "arrived in the area to perform combat missions did not undergo appropriate training and lack practical skills in the use of basic types of weapons. This leads to significant losses of enemy manpower."

Newsweek was not able to independently verify Ukraine's report and reached out to Russia's Defense Ministry for confirmation and comment.

If true, the losses due to insufficient training could further degrade Russian President Vladimir Putin's manpower. The latest estimate from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said that more than 69,000 Russian troops have been killed since the war began on February 24. Similarly, a U.S. Defense Department release in late August said that U.S. officials believe Russia had lost between 60,000 and 80,000 soldiers.

Putin launched a partial mobilization last month that he said would bolster his troops in Ukraine with up to 300,000 additional soldiers, and Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksii Hromov announced Thursday that Ukraine expects to see the "main activity" of mobilized Russians in about one and a half or two weeks.

But the new operational update underscored reported issues that have plagued Putin's draft, such as insufficient training, a lack of supplies and an assessment from a U.S. think tank that the mobilization might not be able to generate quality soldiers.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged Wednesday that Russia lacks enough supplies for its drafted soldiers but said that a newly formed council created by Putin was working to resolve the issues.

"Vigorous measures taken to rectify the situation are already yielding the first positive results," he said.

The Ukraine staff wrote in the Facebook post that Russia pulled military equipment out of storage and sent it to Ukraine to replenish losses but its condition was "unsatisfactory."

"According to preliminary information, a significant part of the weapons and military equipment that the occupiers sent to the Donetsk and Novopavliv directions are of limited or completely unsuitable for combat use," the update said. "In particular, we are talking about T-62 tanks removed from long-term storage."

Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, shared a clip on Twitter last month that appeared to show multiple 50-year-old T-62 tanks lined up on railway tracks in Russia.

Donetsk is the name of a city and region in eastern Ukraine. The General Staff's mention of Novopavliv appears to refer to the village of Novopavlivs'ke in the southern Mykolaiv region.