US estimates Russian casualties in and around Bakhmut at 100,000

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1 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The United States has indicated that, based on the data they handle, Russia would have suffered some 100,000 casualties, between regular soldiers and mercenaries from the Wagner Group, since December alone in Bakhmut and its surroundings.

The spokesman for the National Security Council of the United States, John Kirby, has stressed that this “astonishing” figure – although Washington includes both dead and wounded in casualties – is a sign that the Russian offensive in the Donbas region , where Bakhmut is located, has “failed”.

Kirby has indicated that “almost half” of these casualties correspond to Wagner’s mercenary ranks, which in recent months has staged notorious discrepancies with the high military echelons of the Kremlin, which he accuses of not supplying the necessary equipment and ammunition. to stay in combat.

Thus, he has described as “ridiculous” the figure of 94 casualties that Wagner’s leader, Yevgeni Prigozhin, said his group had suffered so far. On the other hand, he has ruled out offering any balance on the casualties of the Ukrainian side, since it is up to kyiv to provide that information and not to Washington.

“Russia is the aggressor and I am not going to give information publicly that, once again, will make things more difficult for the Ukrainians (…) I do not need to abide by the same sense of courtesy towards the Russians, I have not done it and I’m not going to start doing now,” Kirby has settled.

Finally, Kirby has highlighted that “most” of the efforts of the Russian side to gain control of Bakhmut have not only “stalled”, but have “failed” and that they have only achieved spaces with “very little strategic value”.

“The bottom line is that Russia’s offensive attempt has failed. After months of fighting and extraordinary losses, Russia remains focused on a single Ukrainian city of limited strategic value,” he explained.