The Russian army may suffer up to 70,000 casualties within the next four or five months, according to Ukraine Ministry of Defense representative Andriy Chernyak.
Chernyak told RBK-Ukraine that Russian leadership is anticipating such losses, as peace negotiations seem unlikely.
An attack Monday by Ukrainian forces on a base in the occupied town of Makiivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, left 63 stationed soldiers dead in what is the biggest Russian-recognized death toll from one attack since the invasion started on February 24, 2022.
“According to Ukraine’s military intelligence estimates, the Russians will try to continue conducting offensive operations next year,” Chernyak said, according to an English translation. “They have not managed to achieve their goal on any of the fronts. They understand that they are losing, but they do not plan to end the war.”
Russia will likely attempt to make offensive military advancements from different directions in the months ahead, he added.
“We are considering the possibility that they can attack from the north or east at the same time,” Chernyak said. “According to assessments of Ukraine’s military intelligence, over the next four to five months, the Russian army may lose up to 70,000 more servicemen. And the leadership of the occupying country is ready for such losses.”
He also predicted that Russia will want to hold the land corridor to Crimea and to capture the entire Donetsk region. Chernyak told RBK-Ukraine he doesn’t believe the occupiers will be able to cross the Dnieper River to capture Kherson again.
A New Year’s Eve evening attack by Ukraine resulted in approximately 400 Russian troop deaths and some 300 injuries, according to Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian online news outlet.
While Russia acknowledged that the attack took place, its official casualty count was significantly lower.
In a January 2 assessment, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said a Russian blog focused on the military criticized the timing of a December 31 cruise missile strike reportedly against a special forces regiment base in Khmelnytskyi oblast as “too little too late.”
“The blogger argued that Russia needed to systematically conduct such strikes earlier on in the war, that the strike should have had follow-up strikes to ensure maximum damage, and that the timing of this strike was inopportune since Ukrainian elements were unlikely to be at the base on New Year’s Eve,” the ISW wrote.
Oxana Shevel, associate political science professor at Tufts University, told Newsweek that the only hypothetical way for Russia to achieve success would be due to a major collapse in Ukraine—of morale and/or military capacity, “both of which show no sign of happening,” she said.
She said the other potential opening for Russian forces in Ukraine involves a breakdown of the Western coalition that has supported Ukraine essentially since the war’s inception. Weapons are part of that support.
“[A breakdown of Western support] seems unlikely to me given how Europe is generally successfully coping with the energy situation, Trump-backed Republicans didn’t do well in the midterms, and continued Russian atrocities are making it easier for Western government and the public to keep supporting Ukraine and Ukrainians who are literally fighting for the right to exist as people and as a state,” Shevel said.
Russia can drag the war out, she added, but “time is not on their side” considering their mobilization prospects, economy, international support, or winning hearts and minds in Ukraine.
“Putin staked his personal future and his warped vision of ‘great Russia’ on this war and will continue throwing lives into the meat grinder till the bitter end….I don’t see how Russia can win,” she said.
Newsweek reached out to the Ukrainian and Russian defense ministries for comment.
The post Russia Ready to Lose 70K More Soldiers Before June, Ukraine Predicts appeared first on Newsweek.
