October was worst month for Russia since start of Ukraine war, UK official says

Russia last month suffered its most significant troop losses since the start of the war in Ukraine while making territorial gains, the United Kingdom’s Chief of the Defence Staff Tony Radakin said Sunday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army had “on average over 1,500 people either killed or wounded every single day,” Radakin said in an interview with the BBC.

“Russia is paying an extraordinary price for Putin’s invasion” and “is about to suffer 700,000 people killed or wounded,” Radakin said.

While Russian gains are putting pressure on the Ukrainian front, Radakin said, Moscow is suffering losses “for tiny increments of land.”

The Kremlin does not provide figures on the impact the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has had on the Russian military. A Wall Street Journal report in September said more than a million people on both sides had been injured or killed since the start of the conflict. United States officials told reporters last month that Russia had suffered more than 600,000 dead or wounded.

The estimated number of Russian casualties is more than 40 times what it suffered during its decade-long invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

 Radakin spoke after a massive drone strike rattled Moscow and its suburbs early Sunday, while a huge overnight wave of Russian drones targeted Ukraine. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said a total of 32 drones were shot down over the Russian capital’s outskirts. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said on Sunday that Russia had “launched a record 145 Shaheds and other strike drones against Ukraine.”

Ukraine has over the past few weeks struggled to contain Russia’s advance into the Donetsk region. Last month, Russian troops managed to take full control of the critical Ukrainian town of Vuhledar after a more than two-year effort to do so.

During the last week of October, Russia seized more Ukrainian land than at any point since the start of the war, Bloomberg reported.

Putin late Saturday signed into law a pact with North Korea obliging the two countries to provide immediate military aid using “all means” if either is attacked. The agreement marks the strongest link between Moscow and Pyongyang since the end of the Cold War.