Even after nearly 18 months since the Russian invasion began, it is largely unclear how horrific the death toll in the army ranks actually is. Both Ukraine and Russia publish figures almost exclusively on the enemy’s presumed casualties.
On Monday (July 31), Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, also did just that, as the German news website Merkur reports. Unlike the General Staff of Ukraine, Russia does not publish such information on a daily basis or in clear overview figures. For this reason, the Kremlin’s new data are noteworthy. According to a report by the Tass state agency, Shoigu stated that the enemy lost exactly 20,824 soldiers as well as 2,227 armaments last month – probably in July. The said 2,227 material losses include ten Leopard tanks, eleven U.S. “Bradleys,” 40 M777 artillery systems from the United States, and 50 self-propelled artillery pieces from Britain, the United States, Germany, France, and Poland.
According to Tass, Shoigu had already cited on July 11 the figure of 26,000 Ukrainian soldiers incapacitated or killed since the counteroffensive began in late May, early June. Due to the overlapping time periods from the two statements, it is not possible to derive a total figure.
Image: R888, Austrian Tank Leopard-2A4, CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (image size changed)