Vladimir Putin has said his forces lost 54 tanks in under two weeks of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in a rare admission of battlefield casualties.
He refused to reveal more details but insisted the losses were much lower than Ukraine’s, claiming Kyiv had suffered “catastrophic” defeats, including swathes of Western-donated arms.
His comments at the Kremlin came as Russian sources reported that a British Storm Shadow missile had killed a top Russian general, the first to die for more than a year.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Ukraine showed reporters newly recaptured villages in the first independent verification of its gains. Reuters said the bodies of Russian soldiers had been left abandoned near destroyed armoured vehicles.
Ukraine also claimed its forces were moving forward, just after Putin said the long-expected counter-offensive was failing.
“Both defensive and offensive fierce fighting is ongoing in the east and south of our nation. We have certain gains, implementing our plans, moving forward,” Valery Zaluzhny, the chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, said on social media.
Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting. Photo / AP
‘The enemy did not succeed’
At a meeting with 18 Russian military bloggers and war reporters, Putin said Ukraine had been attacking Russian positions since June 4 in two areas in the east and, at one point, in the south.
“The enemy did not succeed in any of the points of the offensive,” the Russian president said as he claimed Ukraine was suffering “catastrophic losses in terms of personnel”.
In an apparent slip, he said Russia has lost 54 tanks in Ukraine since the start of the counter-offensive insisting that some of them “can be repaired and brought back to service”.
Russian officials typically never reveal their own losses.
Ukraine, according to Putin, has lost 160 tanks and 360 armoured vehicles, which he claimed accounts for 30 per cent of all weapon supplies to Ukraine by Western allies.
Oryx, an independent analyst of battlefield losses, counted less than 10 Ukrainian vehicles destroyed so far.
Putin has sought to distance himself from the war in Ukraine in recent weeks. But on Tuesday chose to host Russia’s increasingly critical military bloggers and war reporters in what may have been an attempt to appear more reasonable to the Russian public.
They duly pressed him over his weak response to Ukrainian aggression and Western arms.
Visibly rattled, Putin told one pro-war blogger that Russia’s invasion in itself was the ultimate response to the West endangering its security.
“We will continue to [carry out] precision strikes. We will be responding selectively,” he said.
Putin once again denied Russia’s role in blowing up the Nova Kakhovka dam last week, but he did concede the disaster damaged the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
He also refused to order any immediate further mobilisation to back up his troops in Ukraine.
Last September, the Russian leader announced what he said was a “partial mobilisation” of 300,000 reservists, triggering an exodus of at least as many Russian men who sought to dodge the draft by leaving for republics of the former Soviet Union.
Asked about another mobilisation at the Kremlin-held meeting, Putin said: “There is no such need today.”
While insisting that the defence ministry saw no need for another wave of call-ups, the Russian president also raised what he said was a rhetorical question that only he could answer about going for another attempt on Ukraine’s capital.
He said of Kyiv: “Should we return there or not? Why am I asking such a rhetorical question? It is clear that there is simply no answer to this – I can only answer it myself.”
Russian forces attacked Kyiv just hours after Putin ordered troops into Ukraine, seeking to take control of an airfield just outside the Ukrainian capital, but they were repelled with heavy losses by Ukrainian forces.
Further attacks followed, but Russian troops were beaten back and eventually withdrew to a swathe of land in Ukraine’s east and south which Putin has declared to now be part of Russia.
On Monday, Russia lost its first general in more than a year in a missile strike near the front lines of the counter-offensive.
Emergency workers inspect a damaged multi-storey apartment building caused by the latest rocket Russian attack in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. Photo / AP
A well-connected pro-Moscow military blogger published a lengthy obituary to Major General Sergei Goryachev, who reportedly died in a Ukrainian strike.
“The war takes away the best of us,” Yuri Kotenok said in a post to his half a million followers on the Telegram messaging app.
“The army has lost one of its best and most efficient military leaders who was hailed as an exceptional professional and a brave man.”
Several Russian pro-war bloggers said the general was likely killed by a UK-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missile during a Ukrainian attack near Velyka Novoselka where heavy fighting was reported on Monday.
The Russian defence ministry has not confirmed the reports.
Military analysts say recurrent deaths of senior Russian officers in Ukraine point to a manpower crisis as top commanders typically stay away from front-line hostilities.
In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian troops have recaptured about 3 sq km of land, advancing up to 1km on some parts of the front line towards Berdyansk on the Azov Sea, Andriy Kovalev, a spokesman for the Ukrainian General Staff, said on Tuesday.
Hanna Malyar, Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister, said their troops had liberated seven villages in the past week while the advance appears to be focused in four directions, one in the south in Zaporizhya, and three others to the east in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, a devastating Russian missile strike on Tuesday morning hit a block of flats in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, almost gutting out the building and killing a dozen people, local officials say.
As rescue workers were combing through smouldering debris, the death toll climbed to 11 in the afternoon and a further 28 people were injured, Serhiy Lysak, head of the Dnipro region, said.
Russian troops continued shelling the Ukraine-held right bank of the Dnipro river as the area is grappling with massive flooding following last week’s destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam.
In the village of Bilozerka just west of Kherson, a shell hit the local Orthodox church, killing the 72-year old priest and injuring a 76-year old woman, Andriy Yermak, chief of President Zelenskyy’s staff, said on Tuesday.
