MOSCOW (AFP): President Vladimir Putin claimed Tuesday that Ukraine’s casualties in its much-anticipated counteroffensive were ten times higher than Moscow’s even as Kyiv said it was making gains and “moving forward”.
His assessment came hours after Russia claimed it had captured Western armoured vehicles from Kyiv’s forces on the battlefield.
“Their losses are approaching a level that could be described as catastrophic,” Putin said during a meeting in the Kremlin with Russian journalists and bloggers covering the conflict.
“We have 10 times fewer losses than those of the armed forces of Ukraine,” he noted, citing a ratio that could not be independently confirmed.
But Kyiv quickly fired back insisting Ukraine’s push, bolstered with Western weapons and training, had “certain gains, implementing our plans, moving forward”.
“Both defensive and offensive fierce fighting is ongoing in the east and south of our nation,” the chief of the Ukrainian armed forces Valery Zaluzhny said on social media.
In recent days, Kyiv has claimed to have re-captured a series of villages in its eastern Donetsk region.
Putin conceded during the Kremlin meeting that Russian forces were suffering from diminishing stockpiles of some military equipment, pointing in particular to attack drones and missiles.
He acknowledged that authorities could have better anticipated recent cross-border attacks into Russia from Ukraine that forced Moscow to deploy artillery and fighter jets on its own territory.
Putin also said that he was “thinking about” exiting the landmark Ukraine grain deal that allows grain from conflict-torn Ukraine to reach the global market.
RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKES
Putin’s televised comments came hours after Russian missile strikes on the hometown of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky killed 11 people.
The strikes overnight hit multiple sites and smashed into a five-storey apartment building in the central city of Kryvyi Rig.
Zelensky said after the strikes that Russian forces were waging a campaign against “residential buildings, ordinary cities and people”.
Air raid sirens had earlier sounded across Ukraine as the capital Kyiv and the northeastern city of Kharkiv also came under missile and drone attack.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 14 cruise missiles and four Iranian-made drones overnight, with 10 missiles and one drone intercepted.
‘TROPHIES’
The wave of attacks came shortly before Moscow claimed to have captured several German Leopard tanks and US Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.
The defence ministry released footage showing Russian troops surveying the equipment supplied to Ukraine by Western countries.
“Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. These are our trophies. Equipment of the Ukrainian armed forces in the Zaporizhzhia region,” the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.
Kyiv has appealed to its allies in the West to deliver a broad range of modern military equipment to help its forces recapture swathes of territory held by Russia.
Germany’s defence minister said that Berlin would not be able to immediately replace tanks that it had provided to Ukraine.
The Netherlands said Tuesday that Western allies could start training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 fighter jet in the coming months.
If supplied, the aircraft would be the most sophisticated military support materiel yet supplied by the West to Kyiv.
FLOODING TOLL RISES
The strikes across Ukraine came shortly after Kyiv claimed to have retaken seven villages and made advances in its counter-offensive.
Military spokesman Andriy Kovalyov said the area of the recaptured land in the eastern and southern regions amounted to more than 100 square kilometres (40 square miles).
The commander of Ukrainian ground forces, Colonel Oleksandr Syrskyi, said troops were continuing “the defence operation in the Bakhmut sector”, scene of the longest battles of the offensive.
Kyiv’s ambitions to capture more territory further south have been complicated after the destruction of a dam in southern Ukraine last week.
The breach of the Kakhovka dam inundated huge swathes of land under Russian and Ukrainian control, forced thousands to flee and sparked fears of an environmental disaster.
The toll in Russian-controlled territory from the dam breach — which Kyiv and its allies believe was an act of Russian sabotage — has since risen to 17, Moscow-installed officials announced Tuesday.
UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi meanwhile arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday before travelling to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, a flashpoint of the conflict.
The dam forms a reservoir that provides the cooling water for the Russian-occupied plant.
“We are still in a relatively dangerous situation and the IAEA is here to prevent something very bad,” Grossi told reporters in Kyiv.
