This was stated by Ian Stubbs, the senior military advisor of the Great Britain delegation to the OSCE, during the Forum on Security Co-operation meeting in Vienna, reports Ukrinform.
He noted that during the last week, intense fighting was observed while Russia continued its offensive in Donbas and suffered extremely heavy losses.
"Since May of last year, 20,000 to 30,000 Wagner fighters and regular Russian soldiers have been killed and wounded in the Bakhmut area alone — this is a huge loss, taking into account that they advanced about 25 kilometers," Stubbs emphasized.
This means that "more than 800 Russian servicemen are killed or wounded for every kilometer seized; the vast majority of them are Wagner mercenaries," the diplomat noted. According to him, for the Wagner Group owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, "it is becoming more and more difficult to replenish stocks for what he called a "meat grinder" in the east of Ukraine."
Also, most likely, Russia is running out of missile stocks, as evidenced by the increasing intervals between attacking the critical infrastructure of Ukraine, according to the expert.
The issue of providing the Russian troops with equipment is also acute.
"Russia suffered huge losses of heavy armored vehicles, which forced it to deploy 60-year-old T-62 main battle tanks to the front. Since the summer of 2022, approximately 800 obsolete T-62s have been removed from storage. More recently, Russian armored personnel carriers (BTR-50) have also been deployed in Ukraine. These are rare machines that were first adopted by the Russian army in 1954. An obvious question arises: "Why is the new generation of Russian military equipment, which is so praised, absent from the battlefield?" asked Stubbs.
According to him, the truth is that "the advertised Russian main battle tank of the new generation T14 turned out to be a "white elephant" that is barely able to participate in the parade, let alone combat operations in Ukraine. And the Russian Air Force forces do not trust the Su-57 multi-purpose aircraft of the 5th generation so much that they do not dare to use it over Ukraine."
He added that the military command of the Russian Federation demonstrates a striking lack of competence and wastes strategic resources for small tactical victories.
"Everyone sees the truth: Russia's military and defense industry will be defeated in Ukraine," the British diplomat emphasized.
On March 15, it was reported that the Ukrainian military shot down a Russian bomber, probably a Su-24, in the direction of Bakhmut. Also in Bakhmut, the border guards repelled two assaults by Russians, eliminated five and wounded 16 enemies.
It was reported that street battles are ongoing in Bakhmut, and there was an adjustment of our forces in the city area.