Russian forces lost 21 tanks in a single day, Ukrainian forces said on Sunday.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Facebook that another 23 infantry fighting vehicles and eight artillery systems had been knocked out in the last 24 hours.
By Ukraine’s count, this brings Russia’s total tank losses to 3,532. Kiev authorities have repeatedly shared footage of destroyed Russian tanks on social media.
Many estimates vary, but Dutch open-source verification portal Oryx put Russia’s visually confirmed tank losses at 1,847 as of Sunday. The website lists 1,101 as “destroyed” and 550 as “captured” by Ukrainian forces.
On Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had destroyed 8,338 Ukrainian tanks and armored fighting vehicles since February 24, 2022. A combined count of Ukrainian losses to Russian tanks and armored fighting vehicles brings their total to 10,385 for the same period.
In mid-February, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said Russia had lost up to 50 percent of its main pre-war tank fleet in the first nine months of fighting. Just before this report was published, the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said that Russia had probably lost half of its tanks deployed in the war.
Last month, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia would increase its production of military vehicles, including modern tanks, following Western aid shipments to Kiev.
“It is clear that in this case it is natural for us to increase the production of various weapons, including modern tanks,” he said on February 9.
On February 15, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Russia’s military production was a “critical weakness” that was being exacerbated by the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“Production is almost certainly falling short of calls from the Russian Defense Ministry to resource the Ukraine campaign and restore its longer-term defense needs,” the ministry wrote on Twitter.
Also on Sunday, the Ukrainian General Staff announced that 710 Russian militants had been killed in the past 24 hours.
The death toll in Kiev is usually higher than Western estimates, and on February 17, 2023, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said up to 60,000 Russian military and mercenaries were likely killed in Ukraine since the start of the all-out war.
Approximate casualties could reach 200,000 for Russia, the ministry added.
On Friday, the BBC, along with Russian independent media outlet Mediazona, said they had confirmed the deaths of 17,375 Russian soldiers since the war began last year.
Excluding militia fighters in the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, a “most conservative estimate” of the Russian dead in Ukraine would be around 35,000, the BBC said.
A total of 157,500 casualties, including those who died, went missing or were incapacitated, were likely carried by Russia, the BBC’s Russian service said.
news week emailed the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
