According to Ian Stubbs, representative of the British delegation to the OSCE, the Russian military command demonstrates a lack of competence and spends huge resources for the sake of small tactical victories.
Since May 2022, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the private military company Wagner have collectively lost between 20,000 and 30,000 soldiers killed and wounded in the battles for Bakhmut. Ian Stubbs, senior military adviser to the British delegation to the OSCE, said this at a meeting of the Forum for Security Co-operation in Vienna, Ukrinform reports.
Stubbs noted that attempts to attack the Russian Armed Forces continue in the Donbas, which are accompanied by heavy losses of manpower.
“Since last May, between 20,000 and 30,000 Wagner soldiers and regular Russian soldiers have been killed and wounded in the Bakhmut area alone – these are huge human losses with a total advance of about 25 kilometers,” the military adviser said.
The diplomat noted that most of the losses of the Russian side near Bakhmut are accounted for by the fighters of the Wagner PMC, and for every kilometer traveled there are more than 800 killed or wounded Russians.
Ian Stubbs also added that the Russian Federation has suffered huge losses of heavy armored vehicles and is likely to run out of its stocks of missiles and pointed out that a new generation of Russian military equipment is missing at the front.
“The truth is that the much touted new-generation T14 Armata Russian main battle tank turned out to be a white elephant, barely capable of taking part in the parade, let alone fighting in Ukraine,” Stubbs suggested.
According to a British diplomat, the Russian military command demonstrates a lack of competence and spends strategic resources to achieve small tactical victories.
Recall that according to the Institute for the Study of War on March 14, from January 31 to February 28, the RF Armed Forces were able to increase the number of occupied territories of Ukraine by less than 0.04%.
On March 6, CNN reported that, according to their sources, Russia lost 5 times more soldiers in the battles for Bakhmut than Ukraine. The publication notes that such a conclusion was made on the basis of NATO intelligence data.
On March 4, NATO Commander-in-Chief in Europe Christopher Cavoli told Spiegel that during the full-scale war in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces lost about 200,000 of their soldiers killed and wounded, 1,800 of whom were officers.
