Russia's war in Ukraine has been a "military disaster for the Kremlin," a British diplomat said on Sept. 18, saying the country's significant losses in manpower "paint a bleak picture."
Speaking at the Security Cooperation Forum in Vienna, senior military advisor at the U.K. Delegation to the OSCE, Nicholas Aucott, also said factors such as Ukraine's Kursk incursion and the damaging or destroying of a quarter of the Russian Black Sea Fleet add up to a "stunning Russian military failure."
"It is now two years and 212 days since Russia conducted its full-scale invasion, a military action which Russia envisaged would be over in a matter of days," he said in comments reported by Ukrinform.
"In that context, the current predicament can be construed as nothing less than a military disaster for the Kremlin."
Western intelligence estimates cited by the WSJ on Sept. 17 placed Russian losses at up to 200,000 dead and 400,000 wounded.
This is close to Kyiv's estimates on Moscow's casualties, which is over 637,000 killed and wounded as of Sept. 18.
"At the military level, Ukraine’s effective use of maneuver warfare stands in stark contrast to Russia’s 'meat grinder' tactics," Aucott said.
Chris York
Ukraine also launched its cross-border incursion into Kursk Oblast in early Aug. 6, allegedly seizing around 100 settlements and over 1,300 square kilometers (500 square miles).
"Ukraine has a clear right of self-defense against Russia’s illegal, unprovoked, and barbaric invasion, and its actions are demonstrative of the ability of Ukraine’s armed forces to achieve strategic surprise and expose Russian weaknesses," Aucott said.
Russia's counterattack in Kursk Oblast aiming to retake Ukrainian-held territory has been stopped, a spokesperson of the Ukrainian military administration in the region told AFP on Sept. 18.
The statement comes a week after Moscow launched a counteroffensive against the western flank of Ukrainian troops in the Russian region.
"They tried to attack from the flanks, but they were stopped there," spokesperson Oleksii Dmytrashkivskyi told AFP.
"The situation was stabilized and today everything is under control, they are not successful."
Francis Farrell
(Updated: )
