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Ukraine war

Russia Has Suffered 220,000 Casualties in Ukraine So Far, Says UK

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Russia’s casualties including dead and wounded in what they euphemistically call their “special military operation” in Ukraine is on the road to hitting a quarter-million people, the United Kingdom says.

Huge numbers of Russians are being killed in Ukraine according to “the latest U.S. assessments” shared by British defence secretary Ben Wallace during a press conference on Wednesday, with those lives being sacrificed for “almost no progress whatsoever”.

Mr Wallace, who is a former British Army officer and one of the longest-serving ministers in the British government as his close involvement in executing the UK’s support for Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion has seen him immune to the recent churn of Prime Ministers, said the Russians were “suffering huge casualties for whatever piece of ground they do take”.

Speaking alongside the Swedish defence minister after talks in London, Wallace remarked; “The latest U.S. assessments I have seen put casualty figures at 220,000 dead or injured… what that shows is the direction of travel of huge losses of Russians for no gain whatsoever.”

While the actual rate of attrition in Russia’s war in Ukraine is extremely opaque, Western military estimates are made public from time to time. “Senior U.S. officials” cited by The New York Times three weeks ago put the number of Russian casualties at 200,000.

The Ukraine government regularly published extremely precise figures of the number of enemy personnel and equipment they believe they have taken out, although the degree to which this information is good or manipulated for morale is of course unclear. At the time of publication, Ukraine claims it has “eliminated” 172,340 “Russian occupiers”, as well as 3,609 of their tanks.

TikTok is Stopping Us from Producing Ammo for Ukraine, Arms Manufacturer Claims

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A TikTok data centre is using so much electricity there isn’t any spare capacity in the region to power the expansion of an arms manufacturing plant, Norway’s part-state-owned defence company has claimed.

Nammo, an ammunition manufacturing company partly owned by the Norwegian government, has lashed out at Chinese social media platform TikTok for allegedly preventing the arms manufacturer from making more ammunition for Ukraine.

It is perhaps the most remarkable of the recent allegations made against the Chinese Communist Party-linked platform, which has seen governments across the West clamp down on it over China spying fears.

According to a report by the Financial Times however, officials from Nammo now allege that the social media giant is now directly impeding Ukraine’s war efforts. This is reportedly due to the high energy consumption of a data centre linked to TikTok that is located near the Nammo factory, with local energy suppliers reportedly being unable to both supply enough electricity to the ammunition manufacturer for it to increase production while also serving the needs of the server centre.

“We are concerned because we see our future growth is challenged by the storage of cat videos,” Nammo chief executive Morten Brandtzæg said, claiming that the company was supplying 6,000 rounds per day to the Zelensky administration, but that the country needed even more.

Brandtzæg went on to suggest that TikTok’s high power consumption with the local data centre might even be intentional. “I will not rule out that it’s not by pure coincidence that this activity is close to a defence company,” he said. “I can’t rule it out.”

The claim that TikTok is now, intentionally or otherwise, disrupting the Ukrainian war effort against Russia by using as much European electricity as possible is perhaps one of the biggest claims made against the Chinese social media platform in recent days.

Politicians and news outlets have linked the popular app to a wide variety of problems from Chinese spying to the rise of paganism in Western nations.

Western governments appear to be mostly concerned about the security issues posed by TikTok, with a variety of governments in Europe and America ordering their workforces to try and stay off the platform, often ordering it to be deleted from government-owned devices.

U.S. authorities are keen to take things a step further, with support for a general country-wide TikTok ban growing both amongst the country’s political elite.

“I do NOT trust that TikTok will ever embrace American values—values for freedom, human rights, and innovation (sic),” one Republican lawmaker said last week. “It should be banned.”

Perhaps a more pressing issue for Europe however is the issue of energy, with one Nordic industrialist reportedly telling the Financial Times that as the supply of electricity grows tighter — amid, some claim, ongoing green energy failures and gas shortages — manufacturers in every sector will become embroiled in more and more battles with big tech over energy use.

“It will be a big fight,” they reportedly explained. “Do we want green steel or data centres for Facebook?”

Brandtzæg is said to have agreed with this assessment, warning that the company’s disagreement with TikTok was likely not to be a “once-off”, but a “trend for the future”.

Follow Peter Caddle on Twitter: @Peter_Caddle
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Zelensky: No Counter-Offensive Until West Sends More Artillery, Tanks, Rockets

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There will be no Ukrainian counter-offensive until Kyiv’s Western “partners” send more weapons and ammunition, President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned.

In comments to Japanese media quoted by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), President Zelensky insisted: “We can’t start yet, we can’t send our brave soldiers to the front line without tanks, artillery and long-range rockets.”

“If you have the political will, you can find a way to help us. We are at war and can’t wait,” he added, emphasising that Ukrainian forces are also “waiting for ammunition to arrive from our partners.”

Zelensky said the situation in the east of his country, where Russian offensive operations have been concentrated after a series of reverses near Kyiv (Kiev), the Kharkiv (Kharkov) Oblast, and Kherson, was “not good”.

Of course, any such public comments by Zelensky must be understood in the context of a possible effort to deceive or otherwise misdirect Russian commanders, with the British government suggesting that Russia has in fact been losing its “limited momentum” over recent days and the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) speculating that the Ukrainians may now be “well positioned to regain the initiative and launch counter-offensives in critical sectors of the current frontline.”

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said last week that it appeared Russia’s efforts to take the Donbas city of Bakhmut, which has been the scene of the war’s fiercest fighting for months on end now, had “largely stalled” due to “extreme attrition” of the Wagner Group mercenaries and regular forces involved in the fighting, and that their focus was shifting to nearby areas such as the Svatove-Kremina sector and Kupiansk (Kupyansk) in the Kharkiv Oblast.

The British say they believe that this is not because the Russians hope they can make significant breakthroughs in these areas — although recapturing Kupiansk, the former administrative capital of the Kharkov Military–Civilian Administration, from which they were almost completely routed last September, would be their first major success in the region for many months — but because they believe they need to establish a more defensible “security zone” along the north-eastern front.

“Russia’s intent in the north-east likely remains defensive,” the MoD suggested, speculating that Russian commanders “probably fear this is one of the sectors where Ukraine could attempt major offensive operations.”

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Russia Pulling Ancient T-54 and T-55 Tanks from Storage as War Drags On

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Ancient T-54 and T-55 tanks have been removed from storage and may soon be joining the slightly less ancient T-62s that Russia has already dusted off for use in Ukraine.

Imagery of trains loaded up with T-54s, which first entered service when Joseph Stalin still ruled the Soviet empire in the 1940s, and T-55s, which entered service in the late 1950s, have been circulated in media outlets including Forbes, Newsweek, and The Washington Post in recent days.

According to the Georgia-based Conflict Intelligence Team, the footage comes from the Russian Far East, near the 1295th Central Tanks and Repair Storage Base is in Arsenyev, meaning that, like recently reactivated T-62s, the venerable armour has likely — if not certainly — been refurbished for deployment to Ukraine.

Underarmoured, underpowered, and grossly undersized compared to the Western-made Challenger 2, Leopard 2, and M1 Abrams main battle tanks now being transferred to Ukraine, the possible deployment of T-54 and T-55 series tanks has been a source of much mockery among Russia’s detractors, with the likes of Carl Bildt, co-chairman of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former Swedish prime minister, asserting it underscores how “their stocks of modern arms have been seriously depleted.”

There has been some acknowledgement, however, that it is unlikely that Russia would use the geriatric armour for tank-on-tank combat with modern vehicles — such engagements being relatively rare in Ukraine, in any case — but rather as makeshift mobile artillery, as appears to have been the case with T-62s.

In this context, their reactivation would arguably be a fairly sensible way to tap stores of old ammunition which would otherwise go to waste in what has proved to be a shell-hungry war.

Glen Grant of the Baltic Security Foundation has meanwhile warned Newsweek that T-54/55s should not be too lightly dismissed, observing: “If you are in a built-up area, it is still a tank with a big gun and it still has got to be beaten. The round from that gun will take out the sides of buildings.”

Popular Mechanics, despite a fairly scornful headline — ‘As Losses Mount, Russia Is Reactivating Soviet-Era T-54 Tanks. That Says So Much.’ — has also conceded that “the T-54/55 still poses a deadly threat to infantry, its gun still threatens all armoured vehicles short of a tank like BMP or Bradley fighting vehicles, and its front turret armour should withstand most weapons not designed to bust tanks, including the autocannons on IFVs.”

Notably, Bradleys and similar Western “light tanks”, as French president Emmanuel Macron has branded them, are being sent to Ukraine in far larger numbers than more formidable main battle tanks like the Leopard 2 — with Canada’s commitment of the German-made heavy armour totalling a paltry eight vehicles, for example.

Variants of the T-72 and T-80, which first entered service in 1970s, have been the mainstay of the Russian tank forces operating in Ukraine, with variants of the more modern T-90 present in smaller numbers.

The next generation T-14 Armata, plagued by multiple delays and order cancellations over the years, has been produced in unknown but likely very small quantities, and is not in active service.

Footage has emerged on social media appearing to show T-14s operating at training grounds for mobilised reservists in Russia proper, but there is no evidence it has actually been deployed on operations, or ever will be.

“Production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat,” a British intelligence update said of the T-14 in January.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery
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U.N. Accuses Both Russia and Ukraine of Potential War Crimes, Summary Execution, Torture of Prisoners of War

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The Russian and Ukrainian armed forces have been accused of torturing and executing prisoners of war over the past year by the United Nations, which said that such actions could amount to war crimes.

A report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) claimed that both Russia and Ukraine have engaged in the summary execution of prisoners of war, which contravenes numerous international human rights laws and treaties on war.

The OHCHR said that they documented cases of summary executions of at least 25 Russian prisoners of war (POWs) under the authority of Ukrainian forces.

“Such cases amount to gross violations of [international human rights law] and serious violations of [international humanitarian law] that may constitute war crimes,” the report said.

The UN body went on to claim to have documented poor treatment of POWs at eight of the 31 transit or permanent camps run by the Ukrainian government, in which they found documented cases of torture and other forms of poor treatment of Russian prisoners, including so-called “welcome beatings” in a prison in Dnipro from March to May 2022.

According to the OHCHR, the Ukrainian government provided them with “full and confidential access” to the locations where prisoners of war are being held, as opposed to the Russian government, which refused to do the same.

Through investigative efforts, including interviewing Ukrainian POWs who were released from Russian captivity, the UN said that they found evidence of the summary executions of 15 POWs at the hands of the Russian armed forces or the Wagner Group mercenary organisation or other contracting groups.

They went on to claim evidence of POWs being used as human shields, the death of two wounded prisoners for lack of medical attention, and the use of torture to extract information.

The report also highlighted an instance that went viral on social media in July of last year in which a Russian soldier was filmed appearing to cut off the testicles of a man wearing a Ukrainian armed forces uniform before shooting him in the head.

The UN said that while they were not able to identify the victim in the video, the “incident does not appear staged and would manifestly amount to torture, including sexual violence, and wilful killing.”

A series of videos published in November appearing to show the summary executions of dozens of Russian POWs at the hands of Ukrainian forces were also deemed as “highly likely authentic.”

The report claimed that while torture and other poor treatment of prisoners of war occurred on both sides, the practice was more commonly documented against Ukrainian POWs, with nine out of ten of those interviewed reporting such abuse compared to around half of Russian prisoners who claimed to have been tortured or subject to other abuse.

Commenting on the findings, Matilda Bogner, the head of the UN monitoring mission, said: “We are deeply concerned about the summary execution of up to 25 Russian prisoners of war and persons ordered to combat by Ukrainian armed forces, which we have documented.”

“In relation to the treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, we are also deeply concerned by the summary execution of 15 Ukrainian prisoners of war shortly after being captured by Russian armed forces,” Bogner continued. “The Wagner Group — military and security contractors — perpetrated 11 of these executions.”

While often lauded by the West, Ukrainians have previously been accused of wrongdoing in the war by Amnesty International, who alleged that they were unnecessarily endangering the lives of civilians by establishing military bases in residential areas including schools and hospitals, as well as launching attacks from heavily populated civilian areas in attempts to deter retaliation from the Russians.

President Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the report from the human rights organisation, claiming that Amnesty International was “playing into Russia’s hands” and shifting “blame from the aggressor to the victim of aggression.”

Embarrassingly, just days later Amnesty International backed down and apologised, issuing a statement in which the organisation said that it “deeply regrets the distress and anger that our press release on the Ukrainian military’s fighting tactics has caused.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka