Ukraine says Russian losses are ‘significant’

Stephen Coates | February 20, 2023

US President Joe Biden is due to visit Poland to mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, which said it was inflicting heavy losses on Moscow’s forces in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.

The war which began on February 24 last year has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, driven millions from their homes and reduced cities to rubble across swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine.

There has been little change on the vast frontline in recent months as both sides prepare for offensives expected in the northern spring, Russia boosted by thousands of conscripts and Ukraine fortified with Western battle tanks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday said Russia had suffered “extraordinarily significant” losses near the town of Vuhledar in the eastern Donbas region, which Moscow claimed to have annexed in September.

“The situation is very complicated. And we are fighting. We are breaking down the invaders and inflicting extraordinarily significant losses on Russia,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

He referred to several towns where fighting has been focused for months, saying “the more losses Russia suffers there, in Donbas – in Bakhmut, Vuhledar, Marinka, Kreminna – the faster we will be able to end this war with Ukraine’s victory”.

Russia’s defence ministry on Saturday said its forces had captured Hrianykivka, a village in the eastern Kharkiv region that is well to the north of the hottest part of the front, which is around Bakhmut.

Ukraine’s General Staff on Monday said its forces “repelled Russian attacks in the areas of the Hrianykivka village”, but that the Russians continued to heavily shell the area with artillery.

Ukrainian officials have urged US Congress members to press Biden’s administration to send F-16 fighters to Kyiv, saying the aircraft would boost Ukraine’s ability to hit Russian missile units with US-made rockets, US lawmakers said.

The lobbying came over the weekend on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in talks between Ukrainian officials, including Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, and Democrats and Republicans from the Senate and House of Representatives.

Biden last month said “no” when asked if he would approve Ukraine’s request for Lockheed-Martin-made F-16s.

But administration officials, speaking on Sunday, said the United States should focus on providing weapons that can be used immediately on the battlefield, rather than fighter jets that require extensive training.

Even so, they did not rule out providing F-16s.

“Discussions will continue over the course of the next few weeks and months,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on CNN.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Sunday that he and Biden would discuss possibly increasing US troop presence in Poland and making it more permanent, during Biden’s February 20-22 visit.

Biden said last June that the United States would set up a new permanent army headquarters in Poland in response to Russian threats.

Biden will meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Eastern European allies and speak about Ukraine, but has no plans to cross into neighbouring Ukraine, according to the White House.

“We are in the process of discussion with President Biden’s administration about making their (troop) presence more permanent and increasing them,” Morawiecki said on CBS’s Face The Nation.

Russia says it was forced to launch what it calls a “special military operations” in Ukraine to rid the country of Nazis and protect Russian speakers. Kyiv and its allies say the invasion is an unprovoked war of aggression.

TASS news agency on Monday reported that Russia had charged 680 Ukrainian officials, including 118 members of the armed forces and defence ministry, with breaking laws governing the conduct of war. 

The report came two days after US Vice President Kamala Harris said at the Munich Security Conference there was “no doubt” Russian forces had committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine, an allegation Russia denies.