Russian forces have suffered more than 20,000 fatalities in recent months as they battle to take the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, according to a newly declassified estimate from the Biden administration.
Overall there have been more than 100,000 Russian casualties, including the fatalities, since December, the White House said, a number that underscores the cost of the full-scale invasion to President Vladimir Putin.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby described the numbers as “stunning”. He compared the troops Russia had lost fighting for one town in eastern Ukraine to the casualties the US suffered in the Battle of the Bulge at the end of the second world war. He declined to provide an estimate of Ukrainian casualties.
“Russia’s attempted offensive has backfired. After months of fighting and extraordinary losses, Russia continues to be focused on a single Ukrainian city with limited strategic value,” said Kirby.
Half of the fatalities were mercenaries hired by Wagner Group, Kirby said, and half of those were former prisoners hired by the organisation. He said previous claims from Yevgeny Prigozhin, the group’s founder, that it had only suffered 94 fatalities during the Ukraine war were “ludicrous”.
As the siege of Bakhmut intensifies, Prigozhin has found himself embroiled in an ongoing public spat with Russia’s defence ministry over artillery munitions.
The rivalry between the general staff and Wagner, which took an increasingly prominent frontline role after Russia’s regular army suffered a series of embarrassing defeats last year, is an unusually public display of divisions about tactics, strategy and personnel more than a year into the sputtering invasion.
Putin even attempted to make peace between Prigozhin and defence minister Sergei Shoigu at an in-person meeting in late February, according to US intelligence reports leaked online last month.
But Russia’s advances in Bakhmut have reignited the bitter dispute between Prigozhin and the army, which he accuses of “betraying” Wagner. In videos posted from the frontline town of Soledar, Prigozhin inspected boxes of rifles captured from Ukraine and complained that Russia’s military was only giving Wagner a third of its required daily artillery munitions.
Monday was the anniversary of Wagner’s founding, he said, adding: “If the company is fated to die one day, it won’t be at the hands of the Ukrainian army or Nato, but our bastard bureaucrats at home.”
“Intense fighting” continues in the vicinity of Bakhmut, where Ukraine’s troops are holding on to the western edge of the bombed-out city in the Donbas region, the commander of the country’s ground forces, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Monday.
Since the start of the war more than a year ago, support among the US public for more aid to Ukraine has softened. An AP poll in February found just under half of Americans supported sending weapons to Ukraine, compared with 60 per cent a year earlier. Separate polls show Republicans are more likely than Democrats to oppose further support to Ukraine.
US Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier on Monday rejected a Russian reporter’s suggestion that he would not support more US aid to Ukraine, and said Moscow should “pull out”.
“I vote for aid for Ukraine. I support aid for Ukraine,” McCarthy said during a visit to Jerusalem. “I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine, I do not support your killing of children.”
His comments were notable given his previous reluctance to send more money to Kyiv. Shortly before last year’s US midterm elections, he said Republicans would not write a “blank cheque” for Ukraine. McCarthy has also rejected invitations from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to visit Kyiv.