UK Defence Secretary: 97% of entire Russian army is in Ukraine

BBC reports this.

Commenting on Moscow's offensive strategy, Wallace said that Russia has not been able to muster a single force "to punch through" Ukraine's defences. Rather, "we've just seen an effort to advance". That has come at a huge cost to the Russian army, the defence secretary noted.

"We now estimate 97% of the Russian army, the whole Russian army, is in Ukraine,"  the British minister claimed.

"Helping Ukraine defeat Russia in Ukraine actually adds to our own security at home," he said.

"If 97% of the Russian army is now committed to Ukraine, with an attrition rate very, very high, and potentially their combat effectiveness depleted by 40%, and nearly two thirds of their tanks destroyed or broken, that has a direct impact on the security of Europe," he noted.

"I think what Russia is doing in trying to advance, it's doing in a sort of human way, almost First World War levels of attrition and with success rates of a matter of metres rather than kilometres," Wallace added.

At the same time, he believes that Russian leaders have "a gap in reality".

• At the end of January, Colonel Serhiy Cherevatyi said that in two months of fighting in the Bakhmut sector, the Russian army had lost as many soldiers as in the two Chechen wars.