- Russia has been carrying out offensive operations in the area of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.
- The assaults have contributed to a 90% increase in Russian casualties, the UK MoD said.
- Russia has gained marginal ground but suffered high personnel and weaponry losses in the area.
Russian offensive military campaigns in eastern Ukraine have been partly behind a 90% increase in Russian casualties recorded by Ukraine, according to an intelligence update from the UK Ministry of Defence.
Russia has been carrying out offensive operations in the area of Avdiivka, a small city just to the north of Donetsk.
The moves have been largely unsuccessful so far, with Russia gaining marginal ground but suffering high losses to its personnel and weaponry.
Much of the fighting in Ukraine is now in the south and east of the country, where Ukrainian forces are conducting counteroffensive operations to take back territory occupied by Russia.
The US think tank the Institute for the Study of war previously said that “Russian forces likely intend attacks in the Avdiivka area to fix Ukrainian forces and prevent them from redeploying to other areas of the front.”
But “Ukrainian officials have already identified the Avdiivka push as a Russian fixing operation, and they are unlikely to unduly commit Ukrainian manpower to this axis,” the think tank added.
Russia is able to commit to such costly attacks as it has ramped up recruitment over the course of the war by utilizing “financial incentives” and its partial mobilization last year, the UK MoD also said in its update.
“This increase of personnel is the major factor behind Russia’s ability to both defend held territory and conduct costly assaults,” it said.
It added that it was likely Russian forces had taken around 150,000-190,000 “permanent casualties” — those killed and permanently wounded — since Putin’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Those figures do not include the mercenary Wagner Group, which was headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin until he reportedly died in a plane crash in August, or their prisoner battalions who fought in Bakhmut.
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