Russian losses are increasing and increasing. In one category in particular, a mother of seven in Poland gives birth to quintuplets

“Russia has lost the war,” said not just anyone, but also the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark A. Milley, yesterday in Brussels: “Russia has lost strategically, operationally and tactically. Ukraine remains free and independent. NATO and its coalition have never been stronger.”

The early announcement may come as a surprise given the current Russian offensive efforts. Moscow reported a “breakthrough on the eastern front of several kilometers”. Despite huge losses, Russia sends wave after wave of attacks on Ukrainian positions. Kiev immediately denied the alleged setback.

Armored vehicles would play an increasingly smaller role in the attacks. We are talking about so-called “meat bumps”: Russian infantrymen who have to charge forward without protection and regardless of losses. The official damage figures also show that these reports from the front are probably correct. Although, as already mentioned, they should be viewed with great skepticism, they at least reflect a reasonably realistic course of the development of the war.

Since mid-March, data on Russian casualties has been recorded and communicated by the Ukrainian army. They are collected by a voluntary collective of journalists and statisticians. They are publicly visible.

The picture is clear. The longer the war lasts, the more Russian soldiers are killed every day. Currently, the invaders are losing between 800 and 1000 soldiers and mercenaries per day. In Bachmut alone, up to 40,000 men — a majority of them convicts — are believed to have been there in the past three months. In the crematorium Krasna Hora north of the completely destroyed city, the ovens would burn day and night. The Kremlin has now banned the private army from further recruiting in the prisons.

The situation is different for armored vehicles (main battle tanks and armored cars). According to US data, Russia may have already lost half of its arsenal in this war. No wonder these numbers tend to decrease. The strong increase in September can be interpreted as a result of the western HIMARS deliveries. In addition, in late August and mid-September, Ukrainian counter-offensives began in Kherson and Luhansk.

If the death toll rises but the number of armored vehicles destroyed does not, then this is an indication that Russia is indeed going for “meat sleepers”. Tanks cannot be replaced as quickly as soldiers and mercenaries.

In recent months, Ukraine has increasingly succeeded in destroying artillery and multiple rocket launchers. Here too, the offensives and the use of the HIMARS are noticeable in the statistics. The absolute numbers are devastating. Russia originally wanted to take Ukraine with 1600 artillery guns. There is nothing left of that – nor much of the replenishment. Russia has lost more than 2,300 of these units so far. This corresponds to more than 40 percent of the total arsenal.