Russian President Vladimir Putin made new statements on the war in Ukraine, sending a message to NATO. According to him, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost at least 160 tanks and 360 armoured vehicles. At the same time, the equipment destroyed by Russia accounts for 25-30% of the total volume of combat vehicles transferred from the West.
"There are still casualties that we do not see, caused by long-range precision weapons in clusters of personnel and equipment. So, in fact, there are more of these losses, on the Ukrainian side," the Russian president added.
"Bradleys and Leopards are burning nicely, as we expected. The ammunition inside the tanks is exploding, all scattered in different directions," Vladimir Putin stressed.
Nevertheless, the US is to supply Ukraine with additional armoured vehicles after Kiev was assessed to have suffered heavy equipment losses in recent days. However, a military analyst told Newsweek that Ukraine is "burning through" the equipment it is getting from the West, which may not be able to meet Kiev's demands.
Citing an unnamed US official, the military version of The Drive reported that a new US aid package would include about two dozen Bradley fighting vehicles and Stryker armored vehicles, though it did not specify how many of each. This is part of an additional $325 million US military aid package, first reported by The Voice of America, which will also include ammunition for the NASAMS air defence system and HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Missile System).
The open-source tracking group Oryx said that since the start of Ukraine's counter-offensive, Kiev had already lost 16 Bradleys, five of which had been destroyed, while 11 had been damaged and abandoned. The site did not report any damaged Styrker. The footage and images appear to date between Friday and Sunday, which is consistent with the Institute for the Study of War's assessment that Ukraine began counteroffensive efforts over the weekend.
So far, from a stockpile of 4,000, the US has donated 109 M2A2-ODS Bradley variants. They have also provided four B-FIST variants and 90 Strykers. The US military has been using Bradleys for decades, and while they are smaller than the US Abrams tanks, they can carry several military personnel and are equipped with powerful artillery. They are also more rugged and more durable than the Soviet-era infantry fighting vehicles the BMP-1 and BMP-2.
So far, from a stockpile of 4,000, the US has donated 109 M2A2-ODS Bradley variants. They have also provided four B-FIST variants and 90 Strykers. The US military has been using Bradleys for decades, and while they are smaller than the US Abrams tanks, they can carry several military personnel and are equipped with powerful artillery. They are also more rugged and more durable than the Soviet-era infantry fighting vehicles the BMP-1 and BMP-2.
Kiev has continued its call for Western weapons to combat Russian aggression and their delivery to Ukrainian forces is expected to help their counter-attack, which comes ahead of the NATO summit in Vilnius next month. However, military and strategic studies analyst Alan Orr said Ukraine was "burning off high-tech equipment at a rate never anticipated". He said Western equipment "cannot be replenished at that rate - it simply cannot be built fast enough".
This includes Javelin and Stinger missiles as well as tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs): "If Kiev loses too many, it will not be able to replace them."
Russian TOR... self-destructed
A Russian short-range rocket system appears to have detonated while trying to attack Ukrainian positions, according to a video circulating in Ukrainian media.
A Russian TOR air defense system is seen firing a missile that quickly spins back to earth near where the system is deployed, in a video leaked to social media platforms such as Telegram and Twitter.
The video was posted on Twitter by several accounts, including @NOELreports, which focuses on conflict zones. "Russian TOR in action. I'll leave the comments to you," he said in a comment on the video, which has been viewed more than half a million times. It is not known when the video was filmed.
The TOR system, which comes in several variants, is a Russian mobile air defence system that has been one of Ukraine's military targets throughout the war. It is designed to shoot down enemy aircraft, drones, guided missiles and other precision munitions at medium and low altitudes.
According to the Dutch open source network Oryx, Russia has lost a total of 36 Tor systems since the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022. However, this count only includes visually verified losses and the actual tally could be higher.
Tor systems are also known by their NATO reference designation, SA-15 Gauntlet, and can engage targets up to about 10 miles away, according to the US think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The system began development in the 1980s and debuted in 1986, according to CSIS. TOR-M, the first upgraded version of the original system, entered service in 1991, the think tank said. A later version, the TOR-M2, was designed to target incoming threats, such as a large number of unmanned aircraft.
Ukraine's military has previously shared footage of Tor systems destroyed in combat operations, including those that targeted drones. This comes as Ukraine's much-publicized counter-offensive accelerates, with analysts saying Ukraine made some progress in retaking Russian-controlled territory over the weekend.
The Institute for the Study of War, a prominent Washington-based think tank, said Sunday that Ukraine has made "territorial gains" after launching counteroffensive operations at at least three points on the current front line. The British Ministry of Defence said on Saturday that there had been "significant Ukrainian operations" in disputed parts of the country over the previous day.
