A quarter of Russian forces are down, says European official

About a quarter of the Russian forces used in the invasion of Ukraine are “effectively inoperative”, a European official said, after a high number of human casualties, as well as poor logistics and support.

Russia had about 120 Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG) around Ukraine before the invasion, the CNN in season. Six weeks after the war, approximately 29 of them are now out of commission, the official said.

Russian forces tried to combine some of the remaining parts of the BTGs into combined combat units, using the remains of two or three BTGs to try to assemble one, the official added.

The comments come after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted on Thursday that Russia had suffered “significant” losses of its troops in Ukraine, calling it a “huge tragedy” for the country in an interview. to Sky News.

Asked whether the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kiev and its region could be seen as “a humiliation” for the Kremlin, Peskov said such use of words was “a misunderstanding of the situation”.

“We have significant troop losses and it is a huge tragedy for us,” admitted Peskov, before stating that the reason for Russia’s withdrawal from the Kiev and Chernihiv regions was “an act of goodwill during negotiations between the Ukrainian and Russian delegations.” ”.

Peskov added that Russia did this to “relieve the tension in these regions in order to show that Russia is really ready to create comfortable conditions for the continuation of negotiations.”

THE CNN failed to verify how many Russian troops were killed in Ukraine.

Last month, the pro-Putin Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that the death toll was 9,861 — several times higher than the official Kremlin figures. The number, which was attributed to the ministry and later retracted by the newspaper, which it claimed was hacked, has not been confirmed by the Kremlin.

US and NATO officials last month estimated Russian casualties ranged between 3,000 and 10,000.

Ukrainian authorities said the number of victims is even higher. In a publication on Saturday (9), Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said that around 19,100 Russian fighters had been killed since the beginning of the war, also listing a series of losses of military equipment. Russia, however, does not confirm this information.

*With input from Martin Goillandeau and information from Giovanna Galvani of CNN

Source: CNN Brasil

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