Russian forces lost four T-90M tanks, 11 BTR-82A armored personnel carriers (APCs) and 20 artillery systems on Saturday, July 8, according to Ukraine’s military.
Moscow has now lost a total of 4,078 tanks, in addition to 7,964 APVs, since February 24, 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Sunday.
According to Dutch open-source outlet Oryx, Russia has lost a total of 2,098 tanks since February last year, although this count is thought to be one of the lowest estimates of Russian tank losses. Experts previously told Global Defense Corp that Ukraine’s figure is realistic, albeit “staggering.”
In an operational update posted on Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine had lost 10,604 tanks and other armored combat vehicles in the same period.
This comes after Kyiv marked the 500th day of full-scale war with Russia, with both sides losing a significant amount of military equipment over the course of the conflict.
Over the previous day, Russia struck targets in Ukraine with S-300 missiles and Iranian-made Shahed drones, the General Staff said on Sunday. Ukrainian air defenses intercepted five of these Shahed unmanned aerial vehicles, it added.
Kyiv’s forces are continuing to launch counteroffensive operations against Russian troops, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said on Saturday.
Ukraine carried out counteroffensive actions on “at least three” parts of the front line on Saturday, it said. Russian troops are concentrated in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions to stop “the further advance of our troops,” the Ukrainian military said on Sunday.
Ukrainian forces focused counteroffensive efforts on several parts of the front line in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk region, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday.
Despite reported territorial gains, Ukraine has received criticism for the slow pace of its long-awaited counteroffensive. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC on June 21 that progress on the battlefield had been “slower than desired.”
“We have the initiative now,” Zelensky then said on Thursday. “The offensive is not fast, that is a fact. But, nevertheless, we are moving forward and not moving backward like the Russians,” he added during a press conference in the Czech Republic.
On Friday, Colin Kahl, U.S. under secretary of defense for policy, told the media that Ukraine was “only in the beginning of the middle” of its counteroffensive.
“Those defensive belts that the Russians have put in place in the east and the south are hard,” Kahl said, according to a Pentagon readout. “They’d be hard for any military to punch through.”
“When it happens, you will all see it,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in late June.
Kyiv’s operations are showing a “deliberate and strategic effort” to preserve its resources while wearing down Russia’s manpower and equipment, rather than prioritizing territorial gains, the ISW said on Saturday.
© 2023, GDC. © GDC and www.globaldefensecorp.com. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to www.globaldefensecorp.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.