Every half meter of ground around Bakhmut cost Russia one of its soldiers killed or wounded – Britain in OSCE

Russia has lost about 60,000 troops, killed and wounded, in the area around Bakhmut, advancing only 29 kilometers - that is for every 48 centimetres of ground Russia gained, one of its soldiers was killed or wounded.

Ian Stubbs, Senior Military Advisor at the UK Delegation to the OSCE, stated this at a meeting of the Forum for Security Cooperation in Vienna, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the 24 February 2022 one of its objectives appears to have been the complete capture of the whole of the Donbas region within 10-14 days. Over 15 months later, Russia’s grinding offensive in the Donbas has stalled at a cost of extraordinarily high casualty rates. Since May last year, up to 60,000 Wagner and regular Russian forces have been killed or wounded in the area around Bakhmut alone,” he said.

According to Stubbs, Russia has suffered nearly half of those casualties, almost 30,000 killed or wounded, in the last three months since March.

“These staggering losses have achieved at total advance of just 29 kilometres. That is for every 48 centimetres of ground Russia gained, one of its soldiers was killed or wounded,” he stressed.

Stubbs also said that Russia’s continued attempts to break the will and resolve of the Ukrainian people with repeated barrages of missile and drone strikes on towns and cities across Ukraine are “deplorable and heinous.” “They are the desperate actions of Russian military leaders who have run out of ideas, consistently overestimated their force capabilities and underestimated the strength and resolve of the Ukrainian people,” he said.

The UK senior military advisor also said that it is over a year since Russia’s military leaders “were forced to abandon their aspirations to deliver an overwhelming decisive victory through modern combined arms manoeuvre warfare.” “For over a year, we have watched those decision makers double down on their similarly ill-fated contingency plan - the blunt edged, intellectually bankrupt recourse to attritional warfare. This has resulted in an appalling demonstration of the Kremlin’s willingness to sacrifice the Russian people, including its mobilised citizens, by the thousands in the name of Putin’s horrendous and contrived war of choice,” Stubbs said.

In his speech, the British diplomat also expressed deepest concern regarding the ecological consequences from the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, stressing that “the destruction of the Kakhovka dam is yet another devastating example of the terrible consequences of Russia’s unprovoked, illegal and full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”

As reported by Ukrinform, Russia has been unsuccessfully trying to establish full control over Bakhmut and its surroundings for more than eight months.

In recent days, the Defense Forces of Ukraine continue to advance along the flanks in the Bakhmut direction, while the enemy is losing ground.