Russian Losses Highest Since Peak of Bakhmut Battle Amid Counter—U.K. Intel

Moscow's forces battling Kyiv's ongoing counteroffensive are suffering the highest losses since the height of fighting for the destroyed Ukrainian city of Bakhmut earlier this year, according to a new assessment.

Both Russian and Ukrainian troops are "suffering high casualties" as Kyiv regains Moscow-controlled territory along the front lines, the British Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

Although Russian forces have maintained "relatively effective" defenses to the south of the country, the Kremlin's losses are "likely the highest since the peak of the battle for Bakhmut in March," the government department said in a post to social media.

Ukrainian forces began their long-anticipated counteroffensive earlier this month, making reported gains along the south and eastern front lines.

"Heavy fighting" has taken place in the last few days, the British Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence update, adding that the decimated eastern city of Bakhmut, the western parts of the contested Donetsk region and the southern Zaporizhzhia region had seen "the most intense combat."

"In all these areas, Ukraine continues to pursue offensive operations and has made small advances," the ministry said.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Russia and Ukraine frequently share casualty counts for the other side, but do not offer running totals of their own losses.

On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry said up to 735 Ukrainian fighters had been lost to Kyiv over the previous day.

In a tally published on Sunday morning, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said 650 Russian troops had been taken out of action over the preceding 24 hours. The previous day, Ukraine's military said Russia had lost 670 soldiers. Newsweek could not independently verify casualty counts from Moscow or Kyiv.

"It is very difficult to determine casualties in an ongoing conflict since both sides will try to keep the data secret and inflate the number of adversary casualties," Marina Miron, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, U.K., previously told Newsweek.

Bakhmut, which has borne the brunt of many months of bitter fighting, remains a hotspot of clashes after Russian forces claimed to have taken control of the settlement, which Ukraine has denied.

On Sunday, the Ukrainian General Staff said 26 combat clashes had taken place on Saturday, with Moscow's troops focused on Bakhmut, as well as the Donetsk cities of Lyman, Avdiivka and Marinka.

The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank monitoring the war in Ukraine, said Kyiv's fighters carried out counteroffensive operations "on at least four sectors" of the front line on Saturday.