Ukraine's military has outlined the latest losses suffered by Russian forces in an update posted to Facebook on Sunday morning.
The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said that an additional eight Russian tanks had been destroyed in a single day since the last operational update on Saturday morning, bringing the total number of Russian tanks destroyed since the invasion began on February 24, 2022, to 3197.
Russian forces also lost a further 22 armored personnel vehicles (APVs) and seven artillery systems, according to the General Staff.
The operational update also said that Russian forces had lost 650 troops in the time period, bringing the Russian death toll in Ukraine to 126,160 by Ukraine's count.
Newsweek could not verify this number. The reported death tolls for Russian and Ukrainian forces differs between Kyiv and Moscow, and it has proved difficult to establish independent figures.
The Russian defense ministry does not offer a regularly updated casualty count. At the end of March 2022, 1351 Russian soldiers had been killed in the first month of fighting in Ukraine, according to Russian state media.
Just days before this death toll was made public, NATO estimated it at between 7,000 and 15,000.
An updated death toll presented by Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu on September 21, 2022, reported that 5,937 Russian personnel had been killed since February in Ukraine.
On the same day, the Ukrainian General Staff of the Armed Forces put the estimated number of Russian fatalities at around 55,000.
In November, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Mark Milley, said that there had been "well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded" in the war since February.
In early December, a joint-tally collated by the BBC's Russian service and independent Russian outlet Mediazona confirmed the deaths of 10,000 Russian personnel in Ukraine.
"We rely only on confirmed death reports, so the data collected does not reflect the real level of casualties," the BBC wrote as it published the figures. "We assume that our list may contain at least 40-60% fewer names of the dead than actually buried in Russia."
As of January 27, Mediazona had verified 12,538 Russian casualties.
On Saturday, the U.K. defense ministry, referring specifically to the New Year's Day attack on Makiivka, Donetsk, cast doubt on how accurately Russia's reported death toll reflected the true casualty count.
"The difference between the number of casualties Russia acknowledged and the likely true total highlights the pervasive presence of disinformation in Russian public announcements," the ministry wrote on Twitter.
The government department said "deliberate lying authorised by senior leaders" and inaccurate information passed up the chain of command from junior officials played a part in the misleading statistics.
On Saturday, Ukraine's defense ministry reported that more than 5,000 Russian soldiers had died in the previous week alone.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more
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