Ukrainian army’s casualties ten times Russia’s losses, says Putin

Russian Politics & Diplomacy June 13, 2023, 18:58

Speaking about Ukrainian armor losses, the Russian president said that they were "even more serious"

MOSCOW, June 13. /TASS/. The Russian army has lost ten times less troops than the Ukrainian military that is carrying out a counteroffensive, President of Russia Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with military reporters on Tuesday.

The Ukrainian army has "an unfavorable structure of casualties," the Russian leader said.

"Of all the casualties, and they are close to the estimate that can be called catastrophic in terms of the personnel, the structure of their losses is unfavorable because casualties can be sanitary and irretrievable. Normally, irretrievable losses amount to 25% or maximally 30%. However, they [the Ukrainian military] has the almost 50/50 ratio," Putin pointed out.

It is understandable that the defending party sustains less casualties, the Russian president said.

"But still, this 1 to 10 ratio is in our favor, so to speak: we have ten times less losses than the Ukrainian armed forces," Putin said.

Speaking about Ukrainian armor losses, the Russian president said that they were "even more serious."

"They have lost over 160 tanks and more than 360 armored vehicles of various types over this time [the period of the counteroffensive]," Putin said.

"This is only what we see. There are also losses that we do not see that are inflicted by strikes of long-range precision weapons against amassed manpower and equipment. That is, in real fact, they have greater losses," the head of state specified.

In my estimates, this is about 25% or, perhaps, 30% of the amount of equipment delivered [to Ukraine] from abroad," Putin said.

"As it seems to me, they will agree with that, if they make an impartial count and, proceeding from what I have seen from open Western sources, they say about actually the same thing,"

The Russian president declined to speak about Russia’s personnel casualties, referring the issue to the Russian Defense Ministry.

As for equipment losses, the Russian leader said that "they [the Ukrainian military] have lost over 160 tanks while we have lost 54 tanks and some of them can be repaired," the head of state said.

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