According to a Guardian analysis published on June 10, Ukrainian losses are now reaching 20,000 a month. This rate of loss “raises questions about what state Ukraine’s army will be in if the war drags on into the autumn.”
“Kyiv’s forces are far from a point of collapse,” the Guardian claims. “But several months of high casualties will erode its fighting strength significantly, even allowing for some of the wounded to recover. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s forces are already being pushed back in a Donbas artillery bombardment so intense it is likely to have a shell-shock impact on many of those who survive it.”
Officials at the Pentagon prefer to talk about only their estimates of Russian casualties, creating a lopsided impression that the Russians are doing much worse. But, “with an artillery overmatch of 10 or 15 to 1, according to the Ukrainians, it may well be that the invaders’ casualty rate is far lower at the moment, because they are able to deal death from a greater distance to defenders who cannot see them,” the Guardian observes. Ukrainian officials also say that their forces are running out of artillery ammunition. Soviet-era stocks of 152mm shells is are about used up, leaving Ukrainian forces to rely on 155mm artillery being provided by NATO.
