The celebration of “Victory Day” in the Second World War created a delicate communication problem for the Kremlin regarding the situation in Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defense notes in its latest assessment of the war.

In the assessment, based on intelligence reports from London, it is recalled that the leaders of several regions bordering Ukraine, including Crimea, illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, announced the cancellation of celebrations related to the victory in the “Great Patriotic War”, named after used in Russia during World War II.

Instead, the leaders of Russian cities located further from the border with Ukraine assured that the plans for May 9 will not be affected by the “special military operation” in Ukraine, apparently not worried about the “security risks” that their colleagues talked about. find out closer to the theater of military operations .

“However, this different approach highlights a delicate communication problem for the Kremlin. Putin presents a “special military operation” in the spirit of the experience of the Second World War. The message risks further unsettling many Russians who have direct insight into the failed and mismanaged campaign in Ukraine,” the British assessment said on Thursday morning.

It is noted that commemorating the fallen soldiers of previous generations can easily turn into a discussion about the scale of the current losses of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, which the Kremlin is trying to hide.

How many soldiers would Russia lose?

Documents leaked from the Pentagon last week indicate that Russian losses in Ukraine will be 35,500-43,000 soldiers killed in action and 154,000-180,000 wounded, nearly triple the number of casualties recorded by the Ukrainian armed forces. fight.

Much of this was recorded from late last fall and early winter, when the military command in Moscow used recruits to fill gaps in its defensive lines left by the collapse of the Kharkiv front and other setbacks suffered by the invading forces.

In recent months, the regular forces of the Russian army have suffered significant losses in the Donetsk region, where they were used to gradually replace Wagner’s mercenaries, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who, in turn, suffered catastrophic losses, both in dead and wounded, and through desertion.

Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkovskyi said last Sunday that the Russian army had recently suffered “colossal losses” near the towns of Avdiyivka and Maryinka in the Donetsk region, losing about two companies or up to 400 soldiers every day.

While these figures should be viewed with caution, as they cannot be independently verified and information warfare is being waged on both sides of the conflict, they appear to be in line with independent estimates of casualties suffered in recent weeks by Vladimir Putin’s forces in Ukraine.

Follow the latest events of the 414th day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.