Ukraine said that Russia lost 25 tanks and 37 armored vehicles in one day and also provided its latest estimates of Russian losses.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces said last Saturday Facebook Page that Russia lost an additional 25 tanks, bringing the total number of these vehicles said to have been destroyed since the start of the massive invasion on February 24 to 2034.
In its daily update, Ukraine also said that Russia has now lost a total of 403 armored combat vehicles, with 37 destroyed in a single day. “The opponent incurred the greatest losses in the directions of Donetsk and Kryvyi Rih,” said Facebook’s statement, referring to the center and east of the country.
British Ministry of Defense in May He said that Russia is losing a large number of tanks and that Moscow has taken 50 years of T-62 tanks from storage for use in Southern assembly of forces (SGF).
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Meanwhile, the death toll of Russian troops is also close to 50,000, according to the latest Ukrainian figures, which said 350 more were killed, bringing the total to 49,050.
It is difficult to verify the exact number of losses of Russian troops and equipment. Moscow rarely discloses its military losses, and officially published the latest figures on the deaths of 1,351 soldiers at the end of March. NEWSWEEK Contact the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment on the latest Ukrainian estimates.
Meanwhile, the governor of Donetsk region, Pavlo Kirilenko, said on Saturday that during the night Russian forces launched missile attacks on Kramatorsk and Slovyansk in eastern Ukraine. He wrote on Telegram that there was damage to homes and businesses but no deaths.
It comes amid a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south of the country, with Kyiv’s forces concentrating on the Kherson region and its capital of the same name, which Russia captured early in the war and has great strategic and political value.
In an interview with independent news outlet Medusa, military analyst Rob Lee said it was not clear whether Ukraine had the equipment or soldiers who had received sufficient training to launch the military offensive.
Lee predicted “a kind of crushing offensive” as Ukrainian forces retake the cities “but it takes time” and “might require a lot of artillery”.
“I think Ukraine wants to make the position of Russian forces west of the Dnieper River unsustainable,” he told the newspaper. “What they are basically trying to do is to make Russia’s attempt to control Kherson more expensive.”
This includes targeting bridges or “anything within HIMARS’ range,” he said, referring to the US supplier High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems (HIMARS) Which allowed the Kyiv troops To hit the railways and roads of Antonovsky which surrounded the Russian forces.