Drone footage posted online by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence shows the moment a Russian artillery weapon is destroyed by a Ukrainian drone.
The footage captured by the 412th UAS Regiment shows a missile falling on the Russian self-propelled cannon from above on a day which saw Putin’s forces lose a further 1400 soldiers.
The estimated 1,430 soldiers lost brings the total killed, wounded or missing since the outset of the conflict to 803,100.
Intelligence analysis from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) shows that Russia has been losing an average of 1,200 casualties for nearly a year as a desperate Kremlin runs through manpower at an astonishing rate in its pursuits to gain as much territory as possible before the inauguration of Donald Trump.
The president-elect has vowed to end the war on his first day in office. While the method remains unclear, many commentators believe that the two sides are working towards holding the strongest hand possible at any future negotiation.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Russia had suffered almost 40,000 casualties in the region of Kursk since August, when Ukraine staged an audacious offensive to capture the Russian territory.
James Black, assistant director of the Defence and Security research group at RAND Europe, has pointed out the danger of tolerating such significant casualties for such a long period, highlighting the swift downfall of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria as a case in point.
Mr Black said: “This is a highly significant year and both sides as trying to maximise their negotiating position and leverage ahead of any potential brokered or encouraged negotiations or even just a ceasefire.
« On the one hand, the Ukrainians are struggling militarily; they are pretty heavily stretched in the east of Ukraine, where Russia has been using superior numbers and their general greater weight of equipment and firepower to grind down Ukrainian positions in particularly in Donetsk and Luhansk.
“At the same time, Russia is seeing its economy in an increasingly fragile position and is also seeing its stockpiles of military equipment starting to run out. So there is this kind of race between both sides to try and maximise their position.”
North Korean forces have recently bolstered the depleting Russian forces, with as many as 11,000 reportedly deployed to the area to aid Putin’s war effort.
Over 3,000 of these are believed to have already been killed or wounded after being deployed to Russia’s two main fronts in Kursk and Donetsk.
Mr Black added: “Clearly, the war has had a huge and horrific human toll on the Russian side.
« And obviously, many of the troops that have been sent in to fight for Russia in Ukraine have not done so terribly willingly – there are conscripts, or indeed, and some of them have come from prisons.
“We are starting to see the costs of the war adding up, and a vast proportion of the government spending in Russia is going on the war and on the military more generally.
“This means less money for everything else, like public services, schools, hospitals and all the other ways that an authoritarian regime can keep people kind of broadly happy with.
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