Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces have lost 55 tanks in Ukraine over the course of the past week, according to the Ukrainian military.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces posts daily updates on Russia’s losses on its Facebook page, writing on Tuesday that Moscow has lost 4,174 tanks since Putin launched his war on February 24, 2022.
Fifty-five of those tanks have been lost since July 18, with 12 of the tank losses occurring in the last 24 hours alone. The announcement of these losses comes as the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank reports that Ukraine has been making new gains in certain regions during its counteroffensive.
The kyiv numbers, which include tanks destroyed, damaged and captured, could not be independently verified by news week. The Kremlin rarely comments on losses suffered in the war, but Putin said during a meeting with military bloggers on June 13 that his country had lost 54 tanks in Ukraine. An anonymous US official told the Associated Press that the Russian leader’s comments were “not accurate.”
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According to Ukraine, Russia has also lost 243,220 soldiers since the start of the war, including 4,120 lost last week. (Those numbers could also not be independently verified by news week.)
On Monday, the ISW wrote in a assessment of the war Ukraine has reported military advances on Bakhmut’s southern flank, as well as advances in parts of the western and eastern parts of the Zaporizhzhia region.
Ukrainian troops have also been carrying out movements in the eastern Donetsk region, according to comments made on Tuesday by Ukrainian General Staff spokesman Andriy Kovalev.
Ukrainian officials reported Tuesday that kyiv’s air defenses had shot down all Russian drones sent to attack the city during an overnight attack. (It was not announced how many Russian drones were shot down.) The attempted assault on kyiv followed Ukraine’s drone attack on Moscow on Monday that was reported by Russian media.
Russia successfully carried out attacks on Ukrainian grain facilities over the past week following the Kremlin’s announcement that it would no longer extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative. The end of the grain deal, which allowed Ukraine to export its grain by sea during the war with Russia, has raised concerns about global food security.
news week reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry by email for comment.
The war has cost both sides significant amounts of both military equipment and lives.
A recent tally by Dutch open source outlet Oryx put Ukraine’s tank losses at 587 and Russia’s at 2,164. However, Oryx only includes visually confirmed losses, and experts have said their numbers are likely only representing a minimum.