Ukraine claims Russia has lost nearly 700,000 troops since start of war

Moscow has lost 699,090 soldiers in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff noted.

According to the report, Russia has also lost 9,182 tanks, 18,523 troop-carrying armored fighting vehicles, 28,160 vehicles and fuel tanks, 20,086 artillery systems, 1,244 multiple launch rocket systems, 994 air defense systems, 369 airplanes, 329 helicopters, 18,187 drones, 28 ships and boats, and one submarine.

It comes as the United States announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not achieved a single one of his strategic objectives after nearly 1,000 days of full-scale war against Ukraine.

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t flee. Kyiv didn’t fall. And Ukraine didn’t fold,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in his op-ed published by Foreign Affairs.

Putin’s original goals in his full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched in early 2022 were to “liberate the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, “demilitarize and denazify” the country which in the Kremlin’s eyes, envisioned the removal of its Jewish president, and the occupation of its capital city Kyiv.

After swiftly failing to achieve these goals, with the exception of Russian forces occupying all of Luhansk Oblast, Putin was forced to lower his ambitions and said Russia’s “main goal” was to capture all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area that also includes the adjacent Donetsk Oblast.

According to Austin, Russia has paid “a staggering price for Putin’s imperial folly”, with more than $200 billion squandered.