More than 900 of Putin’s soldiers killed in past 24 hours, claim Ukraine officials

Russia has not confirmed the personnel losses it has suffered in Ukraine

At least 930 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine in the past 24 hours, Kyiv’s officials claimed.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in its battlefield update on Thursday morning also claimed Vladimir Putin has lost approximately 302,420 military personnel since the invasion began on 24 February last year.

The Independent has not been able to verify claims of the battlefield casualties.

Kyiv claimed that in addition to the casualties, 43 armoured vehicles, 42 artillery systems, 18 of Russia’s tanks and one aircraft had also been damaged in the same period.

Russia has not confirmed the total personnel losses it has suffered in Ukraine. Similarly, Ukraine has also not confirmed its own military personnel losses in the continuing war.

This comes as Ukraine attacked Russian positions over the Black Sea and Crimea in an early morning attack on Thursday. The Russian ministry of defence said its air defence shot down six aircraft-type drones over the region, of which five were shot down over Crimea.

The fighting has intensified on five fronts of the battlefield in the past day, Ukrainian military officials said.

Russian forces have attacked Ukrainian positions on the Kupiansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Marinka and Shakhtarsk fronts in Donetsk but failed to make any success, the General Staff said.

It added that a total of 57 combat clashes took place on the war frontline, including 5 missiles and 75 air strikes. Russia also fired 56 rocket strikes using Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) at the Ukrainian positions and other settlements.

The Russian troops have also targeted residential buildings and civilian settlements, it said.

Accounts from the Russian ministry of defence and its active military bloggers claimed its forces shot down two Su-27 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force and also targeted two Leopard tanks.

The war frontline, despite surges in fighting on multiple occasions on several fronts this year, has largely remained static. While the Ukrainian counteroffensive successfully restored some of Kyiv’s territory back from Russian control, the region has seen concentration of fighting along multiple axes with no major gains.

The war is now “gradually moving into a positional form”, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi told The Economist in an interview.

He said there was a stalemate on the battlefield similar to that seen during the First World War, owing to technological and tactical parity between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

To break this stalemate, Ukraine will need to gain air superiority, breach Russia’s mine barriers in depth, increase Kyiv’s effectiveness of counterbattery combat, create and train necessary reserves, and build up electronic warfare capabilities.