Russia lost 22 artillery systems and 12 armored personnel vehicles (APVs) between Saturday, September 2 and Sunday, September 3 as troops fought against Ukraine's counteroffensive, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The General Staff released its latest daily estimates of Russian losses amid the Ukraine invasion, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2022, on Sunday. The losses come amid Ukraine's counteroffensive, which for weeks appeared to remain stagnant, despite hopes that Kyiv could reclaim critical Russian-occupied territory. Ukrainian troops, however, have made more progress in recent days.
Moscow's losses also allegedly included 600 troops, five tanks, three multiple launch rocket systems and 11 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), according to the latest update, which was published to the military's Facebook page.
In total, Ukraine says Russia has lost a total of 5,582 artillery systems and 8,649 APVs since the war began, as well as more than 264,000 troops, according to General Staff's estimate.
However, Newsweek was unable to independently verify these numbers, and it remains difficult to prove the exact number of Russian losses in Ukraine.
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment via email.
Dutch open-source outlet Oryx, which has been monitoring Russian losses since the beginning of the conflict based on photographic evidence, reports that Moscow has lost at least 107 artillery support vehicles and equipment, 510 self-propelled artillery systems, 293 towed artillery systems, 959 armored fighting vehicles and 346 armored personnel carriers so far in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces continued to make advances in their counteroffensive in the western Zaporizhzhia Oblast on Saturday, according to the latest report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that provides daily operational updates about the Russia-Ukraine war.
"The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in the Melitopol (western [Zaporizhzhia] Oblast) direction.[1] Russian milbloggers who have recently maintained that Russian forces hold positions in the southern part of Robotyne claimed that Russian forces withdrew from the southern outskirts of the settlement to unspecified positions further south," the report reads.
On Monday, Ukraine said its forces had liberated Robotyne, around 11 miles south of the frontline town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, which lies on an important road towards the Russian-occupied transport hub of Tokmak.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also said on Friday that Ukraine has made "some notable progress" in recent days in the Zaporizhzhia region.
"They have achieved some success against the second line of Russian defenses," he said.
Still, the counteroffensive efforts, which analysts believe began in June, have stalled for weeks despite past Ukrainian success in the war and support from Western allies, who have provided its military with powerful weapons such as HIMARS that previously turned the tide of the war in Kyiv's favor.
