Moscow has rejected a US claim that 100,000 Russian fighters have been killed and injured in Ukraine since December and said time is running out to prolong a deal that allows Kyiv to export grain via the Black Sea.
The Kremlin also warned Germany on Tuesday that its delivery of arms to Kyiv was increasing its involvement in the war, as Ukraine’s military said it was determined to keep fighting for the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut amid preparations for a counter-offensive against Russia’s invasion force.
“Just since December, we estimate that Russia has suffered more than 100,000 casualties, including over 20,000 killed in action … It’s really stunning, these numbers,” said US national security council spokesman John Kirby.
Citing US intelligence reports, he said about half of those killed were from the Wagner mercenary group, which includes many “Russian convicts thrown into combat in Bakhmut without sufficient combat or training, combat leadership, or any sense of organisational command and control”.
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Listing frontline towns in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area, Mr Kirby said that last December, Russia initiated a broad offensive across multiple lines of advance, including toward Vuhledar, Avdiivka, Bakhmut, and Kreminna.
“Most of these efforts stalled and failed. Russia has been unable to seize any strategically significant territory … Russia has exhausted its military stockpiles and its armed forces,” Mr Kirby added, saying that Moscow’s small gains had come at “terrible, terrible cost”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the White House figures and said only casualty numbers from Moscow officials were valid. Russia’s defence ministry has not released such data since September, when it claimed that 5,937 of its fighters had been killed, whereas Ukraine had supposedly lost 110,000 soldiers to death and injury; Kyiv said those numbers were absurd, but also declines to issue casualty numbers.
“It is as if they plucked them straight out of the air. Washington does not have the possibility to state any concrete numbers. They do not have access to this data,” Mr Peskov said of the US figures.
He also criticised Germany for sending arms and ammunition to Ukraine and said assurances from the country’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, that they would not be used to attack Russian territory were worthless.
“Firstly, Germany has no way of monitoring this. Secondly, the weapons supplied by Germany to the Kyiv regime are already firing at Russian territory, because Donbas is a Russian region,” Mr Peskov said, repeating Moscow’s claim to have annexed the area.
“With each day, the direct and indirect involvement of Germany in the conflict is growing.”
Heavy fighting continued in and around Bakhmut, a road and rail hub in Donbas which has been largely destroyed by months of battles.
“We have made a number of necessary decisions to ensure effective defence and inflict maximum losses on the enemy,” Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said after visiting troops in the area.
“We will continue … to hold Bakhmut, destroying Wagner and the other most combat-capable units of the Russian army,” Mr Syrskyi said. “We give our reserves the opportunity to train and we are preparing for further actions ourselves.”
'They have one chance at this' - is a Ukrainian counter-offensive about to begin?
Talks are expected to resume on Wednesday over a proposed extension to a deal that allows Ukraine to ship grain from its Black Sea ports, which Russia blockaded for several months last year.
Moscow says it may pull out of the pact when it expires on May 18th, accusing the West of failing to implement parts of the deal that should benefit Russia’s agricultural sector.
