Russia Lost 1,700 Troops on Tuesday

Understandably, the war in Ukraine isn’t getting the same attention that is being given to the war with Iran right now. That doesn’t mean that nothing is happening there. This week, Ukraine claimed it had killed or injured 1,700 Russian soldiers in a single day of fighting.

Ukraine’s general staff said it had killed or wounded 1,710 Russian troops on March 17 and destroyed 29 artillery systems as well as 230 vehicles and fuel tankers.

The unmanned systems force, which oversees Ukraine’s drone strikes, was responsible for killing or wounding 900 Russian soldiers in a day and a half, after Moscow’s forces attempted to surge forward on the Zaporizhzhia front.

Robert Brovdi, head of the Ukrainian drone unit “Magyar’s Birds”, said that the Russians had attempted to move in using infantry, motorcycles and horses under cover of fog before being wiped out.

In recent months, Russia’s average daily losses have mostly ranged between 700 and 900 troops per day.

If you’re wondering, this is not a record. Back in November 2024, Ukraine reported killing or wounding 2,030 Russian soldiers in a single day.

Still, the 1,710 figure is significant because it suggests recent Ukrainian gains aren’t a fluke. Last month, Ukraine gained more territory than it lost for the first time since 2023. That change of fortune has been attributed to Elon Musk’s decision to cut Starlink service to Russian forces.

After months of slow Russian advances, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, announced on Sunday that Ukraine had regained 168 square miles and thwarted a planned Russian offensive. “The spring campaign, as it had been planned, drowned in this spring for the Russians; they were unable to advance,” Zelensky told reporters.

According to the Institute of Study for War (ISW), a think tank  based in Washington, DC, one factor in Ukraine’s recent resilience could be battlefield communications.

On Feb 1, Musk turned off his Starlink satellite internet in Ukraine for everyone except operators approved by the Ukrainian government, depriving Russian units who had been using the system to communicate with each other and guide their drones. According to analysis by Kentik, a network infrastructure firm, Starlink traffic in Ukraine fell by 75 per cent after the switch-off, implying that three out of every four terminals had been in Russian hands.

“Starlink has become critical for both sides in this war, and the February 1 blocking of Russia’s terminals has had critical battlefield effects in recent weeks,” says Christina Harward, Russia deputy team lead at the ISW. “Russia’s inability to use their Starlink terminals has also degraded their situational awareness and complicated their command and control. Ukraine has been able to exploit these Russian vulnerabilities on the battlefield. Ukrainian counterattacks there have been quite successful recently, with Ukraine liberating more territory than it has lost some weeks.”

Can this continue? Well, Ukraine has been creating more casualties for the past couple months than Russia is bringing new soldiers into the battle. So at some point, Russia will either need to mobilize more troops or it will be forced to reduce operations. 

So far, Russia has been able to replace lost soldiers by simply advertising the war like any other job. This is from a Politico report in December.

For Russian men, war now advertises itself like any other job.

Offers for front-line contracts appear on the messaging app Telegram alongside group chats and news alerts, promising signing bonuses of up to $540,000 — life-changing money in a country where average monthly wages remain below $1,000. The incentives go beyond cash, with pledges of debt relief and free childcare for soldiers’ families and guaranteed university places for their children. Criminal records, illness and even HIV are no longer automatic disqualifiers. For many men with little to lose, the front has become an employer of last resort…

“Assuming that Putin is able to continue to fund the enormous enlistment bonuses (and death payments, too) and to find the manpower currently enticed to serve,” former CIA Director David Petraeus told POLITICO, Russia “can sustain the kind of costly, grinding campaign that has characterized the fighting in Ukraine since the last major achievements on either side in the second year of the war.”

Funding for all of this was likely going to be a struggle as Russia’s oil sales continued to decline. However, the Iran war is providing the Russian economy with a lifeline by a) raising the price of oil and b) temporarily suspending sanctions on Russian oil.

The Trump administration’s decision to ease sanctions on countries buying Russian oil has been welcomed by the Kremlin and has sparked deep concern among pro-Ukraine campaigners.

The US waiver, active for one month, will let countries buy up Russian oil which, under current sanctions, has been floating at sea, unable to be sold.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the “tailored, short-term” policy move would reduce the economic impact of the US-Israel war with Iran.

So as of this week it’s likely that Russia is bringing in billions more than it was last month and that will help it keep making big offers to recruit thousands of new fighters each week to replace the ones that are being killed daily in Ukraine.

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