A declassified US intelligence report says that Russia lost 315,000 soldiers killed and wounded in Ukraine, which is about 87% of the forces that participated in this war at the beginning of the conflict, a source in the US services told Reuters. Tuesday.

The same report estimates that Russia’s losses in personnel and weapons have set back an 18-year-old effort to modernize the Russian army, which was supposed to mobilize more than 300,000 reservists last year, lower recruitment standards to send prisoners to the front and resume work. old military equipment to replace the destroyed, as was the case with the restoration of some T-62 tanks of the 70s.

In the time since the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Russia has retooled its economy to cope with the military effort, and after a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive last summer, Russian forces are now on the offensive again in the east and south. Ukraine, reports France Presse, citing Agerpres.

But, also according to the American special services, this return to the offensive comes at the cost of heavy losses and about 13,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded and more than 220 Russian military vehicles were lost on the front line between Avdiivka and Novopavlivka, starting from October.

The Russian army has advanced “significantly” in Ukraine’s Zaporozhye region, Yevgeny Balytskyi, the Moscow-appointed governor of this region partially occupied by Russian troops, said on Tuesday.

The Russians also launched a “massive offensive” two days ago around the towns of Avdiyivka and Maryinka, hot spots on the front in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian commander in charge of that section of the front said on Tuesday, saying he noted that Ukrainian troops were “firmly hold their positions”.

Kyiv and Washington had different approaches to the counteroffensive

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi is in Washington to persuade the US Congress to unblock $61.4 billion in new aid requested by President Joe Biden for Ukraine, which is needed to counter Russian forces after a Ukrainian counteroffensive failed Expected results.

This failure of the counteroffensive created friction, on the one hand, between President Zelenskyi and the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, General Valery Zaluzhny, and on the other hand, between Kyiv and Washington, each of which had a different vision of how to approach the counteroffensive, until the West managed to satisfy Kyiv’s demands on arms and ammunition shipments, the Washington Post reported in an analysis published last week.

The American officers who, together with the British, participated in the planning of the counteroffensive, were sure that a massive frontal attack of mechanized troops in one direction in the direction of the city of Melitopol would make it possible to decisively break through the Russian lines. The Ukrainian army resorted to a massive mechanized attack, but in three directions, as proposed by the United States, plus two more in the direction of the cities of Berdyansk and Bakhmut, hoping that in this way it would force the Russian army to disperse its forces. But after four days of mechanized offensive operations, the battlefield was littered with destroyed Ukrainian military equipment, including American Bradley armored personnel carriers, German Leopard tanks and minefields, and the high number of dead and wounded Ukrainian soldiers undermined the morale of the troops.

Faced with such a situation, in order to stop the loss of life among the Ukrainian troops and not to lose all Western equipment – about 60% of the Ukrainian heavy weapons that were used in the counteroffensive had already been destroyed or damaged – General Zaluzhnyi changed his tactics and ordered to attack the infantry in small groups of about 10 soldiers, the idea was not approved by the Pentagon.

In the end, the initial plan for the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops to the Sea of ​​Azov in 60-90 days was not fulfilled. Ukrainian troops have advanced only about 20 kilometers through minefields and liberated an area of ​​only about 200 square kilometers, and now they are once again taking up defenses in some areas of the front.

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