After Ukraine claimed the first advances of its counteroffensive, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday Tuesday maintained the opposite: that Kyiv’s efforts are futile. “They are having great losses,” he said in a meeting with Russian war correspondents , “and they are approaching catastrophe”, he said.
In the second time he has spoken publicly about the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Kremlin chief admitted that the Russian army has lost 54 tanks since the start of the Ukrainian advances. But he asserted that Ukrainian losses are ten times greater.
According to him, the Ukrainian army lost at least 160 tanks and 360 armored vehicles. At the same time, the equipment destroyed by Russia represents 25-30% of the total volume of combat vehicles transferred by the West to Kyiv.
Shortly before, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported the capture in the Zaporizhia region of several German Leopard tanks and several American Bradley armored vehicles. And he published a video in which Russian military personnel are seen inspecting combat machines supplied by Western countries.
Hours earlier, during the night speech from Kyiv, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had assured that the counteroffensive of his army is “difficult” but “progress”. His government had announced that its troops had wrested control of at least seven villages from Russian forces.
Putin assured Russian journalists that the losses of Ukrainian troops are greater than what he himself had just exposed, because “there are losses that we do not see, which are inflicted with long-range high-precision weapons in groups of personnel and equipment”.
His “losses are approaching a level that can be described as catastrophic,” he said in a meeting that was broadcast on Russian public television.
Moscow seems to be responding to Ukrainian attacks on several fronts by firing missiles at cities, or at least that’s what yesterday’s shelling of Kriví Rih, in the south-central part of the country and Zelensky’s homeland, indicates.
At least 11 people were killed and 28 injured by Russian cruise missiles (only three were destroyed by anti-aircraft defenses), which hit a five-story residential building, a warehouse, a business and a rescue unit, according to the Ukrainian authorities. The Russian version of what happened only mentioned “a warehouse of foreign-made ammunition and weapons” as the only target.
Russia needs to strengthen itself, Putin admitted, in the face of attacks on its territory from Ukraine, including recent incursions by paramilitary groups loyal to Kyiv in the Belgorod region. “We need to strengthen the border. It has become clear that several things are missing: high-precision munitions, communication equipment, drones”, he listed. If the attacks continue, he added, Russia will have to study the creation of what he called a “sanitary zone” in the territory of the neighboring country “so that it is impossible for him to reach our territory”. As for the big Russian cities, such as the capital, Moscow, where the Ukrainian drones have reached, Putin was convinced that they are well defended.
The Russian leader ruled out a new military mobilization similar to that of the autumn (300,000 reservists), but he acknowledged that it will be necessary to replace the Russians called to the ranks. Although some public figure has asked to mobilize “a million or two million more”, Putin believes that Russia currently has enough volunteers, such as the 156,000 men who have signed contracts with the army this year 2023.
