In the first two weeks of Ukraine’s grueling counteroffensive, up to 20 percent of the weapons it sent to the battlefield were damaged or destroyed, according to American and European officials. The toll includes some of the fearsome Western fighting machines – tanks and armored personnel carriers – the Ukrainians rely on to defeat the Russians.
The staggering loss rate dropped to about 10 percent in the following weeks, officials said, keeping more of the troops and machines needed for the main offensive push that the Ukrainians say is more to come
Some of the improvements have come because Ukraine has changed tactics, focusing more on wearing down Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles than charging at enemy mines and fire.
But that good news hides some grim truths. Losses also slowed as the counteroffensive itself slowed – and even stopped in places – as Ukrainian soldiers struggled against heavy Russian defenses. And despite the losses, the Ukrainians have so far gained only five of the 60 miles they hoped to cover to reach the sea to the south and split the Russian forces in two.
A Ukrainian soldier said in an interview this week that his unit’s drone captured footage of half a dozen Western armored vehicles caught in an artillery barrage south of the town of Velyka Novosilka.
“They were all burned,” said the soldier, who identified himself as Sgt. Igor. “Everyone is hoping for a big victory,” he said, adding a plea that observers from afar appreciate the importance of slow and steady progress.
Russia has spent months preparing for the counteroffensive, and the front is littered with mines, tank traps and dug-in troops, while Russian reconnaissance drones and attack helicopters fly overhead with increasing frequency.
Given those strongholds, experts say, it’s not surprising that Ukraine will bear relatively heavy losses in the early stages of the campaign.
This week, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, acknowledged there had been a brief pause in operations a few weeks ago but blamed it on a lack of equipment and ammunition, and called on Western allies to speed up the delivery.
American officials acknowledged that pause and said the Ukrainians began to act again, but more deliberately, better at navigating minefields and mindful of casualty risks. With the influx of cluster munitions from the United States, they said, the pace could increase.
“It’s not as fast, but it’s not catastrophically behind schedule,” the British defense minister, Ben Wallace, said on Wednesday. “It does what anyone would do to fight the mines towards the Russian line.”
The problems came to focus out on the farm fields in southern Ukraine where most of the counter-offensive was fought. There Bradley Fighting Vehicles, long coveted by the Ukrainians, run into anti-tank mines on a daily basis, said soldiers who fought in the vehicles.
The vehicles, which weigh about 34 tons, are designed to transport infantry soldiers to areas exposed to fire or artillery. A rear ramp opens to allow soldiers to pile up and fight. In planning for the counteroffensive, the Bradleys were meant to carry soldiers across open fields to reach Russian trenches and bunkers.
The Bradleys did their part of the job well; their thick armor provided good protection for most soldiers, who survived many of the mine explosions with minimal damage.
“Your ears are ringing and things inside are flying around,” said one soldier, who asked to be identified only by his first name and rank, Pvt. Serhiy. He survived such an explosion last month in fighting south of the town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region. But in many cases the explosions severely damaged the vehicles, rendering them immobile before they reached the Russian lines.
Military experts have long said that the first 15 miles of a counteroffensive will be the most difficult, since attacking troops generally need three times as much strength – whether in weapons, personnel or both – than those defensive force.
Ukraine’s top military officer, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, expressed frustration that Ukraine is fighting without Western F-16 fighter jets, which the United States recently agreed to allow Ukrainian pilots to train, but which are not expected to be delivered for several month even. Because of this, Ukrainian troops are vulnerable to Russian helicopters and artillery.
Military analysts cautioned that it was too early to draw definitive conclusions about the counteroffensive. “This does not mean that it is doomed to fail,” said Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former assistant secretary general of NATO.
However, he added, the lack of air superiority and air defenses that Western jets can provide for attacking Ukraine means “that casualty rates are likely to be higher than in other conventional conflicts. “
The exact numbers of weapons and armored vehicles destroyed in the counteroffensive, as opposed to recoverable “mobility kills,” are closely guarded secrets, and US officials have not provided raw numbers. although they agreed on the percentages of weapons lost. But a combination of open source data and official estimates can provide a snapshot in time of the breakdown, especially in the early going.
Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade, one of three Western-equipped and trained units deployed early in the campaign, is slated to receive 99 Bradleys, according to leaked US military plans for a counter-offensive from February — still the latest to be made public.
Data from Oryx, a military assessment site counting only the losses it has seen confirmed, shows that 28 of those Bradleys were abandoned, damaged or destroyed, including 15 in a village in Zaporizhzhia Province on June 8 and 9 while the 47th was attacked by helicopters while trapped in a minefield. Six additional Bradleys were reported abandoned or destroyed at Mala Tokmachka on June 26, but Oryx researchers say these losses occurred much earlier, although it is unclear when.
Since the 47th was the only brigade initially scheduled to receive Bradleys, that meant that about a third of the original vehicles were lost – though all but seven of them exploded on a battlefield.
“It is within the realm of possibility that Ukrainian forces have seen losses of this level,” said Dylan Lee Lehrke, an analyst at British security intelligence firm Janes, adding that a “significant” level of casualties Weapons are usually a sign of war. of attrition, as in Ukraine.
Oryx data shows that only 24 tanks were lost for the entire month of June, including some from Ukraine’s own arsenal in addition to those provided by Western allies.
Ten of them were German-made Leopard tanks and mine-clearers, according to the data. Apparently, they lost the fight to Ukraine’s 33rd Mechanized Brigade, one of three units deployed early in the counteroffensive, and scheduled to receive 32 Leopards in US planning documents from February 28.
That means the brigade lost 30 percent of the Leopards it was given — all but two of them in the first week of fighting, the Oryx data show.
Ukrainian authorities said the army had advanced deep into the southern areas of the Donetsk region, but no further than five miles from the former front line in Velyka Novosilka. It faces another 55 miles to reach the Sea of Azov, a key objective of the counteroffensive, as it would cut the land bridge to Crimea, devastating Russia’s shaky logistics. Ukrainian forces are also advancing in two areas in the Zaporizhzhia region.
It was even slower near Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, where most of the Bradleys and Leopards were sent to an area of open fields with little cover. There, the Ukrainian army advanced only about a mile.
Justin Scheck contributed reporting from London.
