“The occupiers are accumulating additional forces for new attacks against our military in the east of the country,” Zelensky announced, proceeding, “We know that the Russian command is preparing for new big losses. In those units, the personnel of which was almost completely destroyed or significantly weakened in March-April, new people are being recruited. With little motivation. With little combat experience.”
“They just want to get the right amount. So that they can throw these units into the offensive. The Russian command is well aware that thousands more Russian soldiers will be killed and thousands more will be wounded in the coming weeks,” he went on.
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Zelensky announced that a fair portion of Russia’s military equipment had likewise been destroyed, including close to 200 Russian aircraft, more than 1,000 Russian tanks and almost 2,500 armored fighting vehicles.
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Though Russia’s estimates of its casualties in Ukraine have generally been lower than those offered by Ukraine or NATO — on the rare occasions when Moscow has given such public estimates at all — a Kremlin spokesperson made a rare acknowledgment earlier this month that Russia had suffered “significant losses of troops.”
In recent days, officials in the U.S. and abroad have detailed Russia’s limited progress in capturing parts of Ukraine and some of its blunders.
“We would assess that Russian forces are making slow and uneven and, frankly, we would describe it as incremental progress in the Donbas,” a senior U.S. defense official explained to reporters on Thursday, referring to an area in eastern Ukraine where Moscow started a renewed offensive earlier this month after struggling in the areas around Kyiv.
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The U.K.’s Defense Ministry announced in a statement the same day that “Russia’s Black Sea Fleet retains the ability to strike Ukrainian and coastal targets,” though it said that Russia had endured “embarrassing losses of the landing ship Saratov and cruiser Moskva.”
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Meanwhile, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has cautioned the West of a “lightning fast” response to any nation that intervenes in its war against Ukraine and creates what he described as “strategic threats for Russia.”
“We have all the instruments [to respond] that no one can boast of ... we’re going to use them if we have to,” he announced, in what has widely been seen as an allusion to Russia’s arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
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Russia surprised the European community by halting gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria on Wednesday because they had declined to pay for the gas in Russian rubles, as Moscow demanded.
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