As Avdiivka changed hands from Ukraine to Russia over the weekend, multiple reports and sources say that Russian forces suffered their highest daily losses of the year in taking the city.
Newsweek reported that, as Russian bloggers counted the personnel casualties of the Battle of Avdiivka, Kyiv's latest estimates on Monday (February 19) showed that Russia lost 1,240 troops, taking the total since the start of the full-scale invasion two years ago to 403,720. Russia also lost a significant number of armored vehicles as they advanced into Avdiivka.
The figures were the highest since December 13 last year, when Ukraine said Russia lost 1,300 troops and not far short of the biggest daily toll of the war recorded last October at 1,380.
However, Ukraine did not release its casualty numbers, and its estimate of Russian losses varies from other tallies.
Senior Pentagon officials also said last week that about 315,000 Russian troops had either been killed or injured, but such figures are yet to be independently verified.
Avdiivka a Russian Pyrrhic Victory?
Meanwhile, open-source research, independent Russian media outlet Mediazona, and the BBC's Russian service confirmed on February 15 the names of over 44,000 Russian soldiers who had been killed in the war.
The figures draw on publicly available information such as obituaries, relatives' posts, regional media news, and local authorities reports. The outlets said that the actual number is significantly higher. Its latest number was 1,194 more than its last update at the start of February and included an additional 15 military personnel with ranks from lieutenant colonel and higher.
Kremlin military bloggers have since posted about considerable losses in its push for Avdiivka, which is located in the Donetsk region.
"Z-Russians on Telegram are now talking about their losses in the Battle of Avdiivka," Ukrainian journalist Ilia Ponomarenko wrote on C, formerly Twitter. "Allegedly, it's 16,000 men as 'irreplaceable losses' (e.g., all fatalities + all severely wounded that will never be back to ranks again)."
If verified, Ponomarenko added, the four-month Battle of Avdiivka could surpass the official death toll of the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, which stood at 15,000.
