Ukraine Successfully Eliminates More Than 2,000 Russian Soldiers Over The Weekend

Russia lost 2,040 military personnel in Ukraine over the weekend, data provided by the Ukrainian military showed.

About 900 Russian army casualties were reported by the Ukrainian Armed Forces' General Staff Sunday.

The military staff stated in a report that the number of Russian losses from the day before numbered 1,140.

In total, Russia has sustained 137,780 combat losses since it invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago, according to the latest Ukrainian data.

Russian losses also included 3,280 tanks, 6,488 armored fighting vehicles and 2,287 artillery systems, among other pieces of military equipment.

Russia likely suffered its highest rate of casualties since the initial week of its invasion, the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense (MoD) said.

"The mean average for the last seven days was 824 casualties per day, over four times the reported over June to July," the British ministry said in a Sunday intelligence briefing.

The rise in Russian casualties is likely due to several factors, including a lack of trained personnel, coordination and resources across the front, according to the British MoD.

Russia successfully mobilized 300,000 military reservists for the war in Ukraine, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed last October.

However, Russia has been accused of sending its newly drafted soldiers to the frontline poorly trained and ill-equipped.

"Russia is clearly treating them as cannon fodder," a Ukrainian commander part of the territorial defense force of the besieged city of Bakhmut in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk province said.

Russia previously employed "human wave" attacks around Bakhmut at least since October 2022, The Telegraph reported.

The tactic, which was commonly used during World War I, involved Russian forces trying to flood the battlefield with a wave of densely packed soldiers sent directly toward the enemy line with the goal of overwhelming the opponent.

Soldiers part of the first wave are supposedly the least equipped and most poorly trained, while the ones after them are better fighters.

"A group of people simply walks across an open area and tries to do something: they just run and have no idea we are going to shoot at them," a Ukrainian soldier who claimed one human wave attack cost the Russians around 100 lives said.

While such tactics reportedly helped in past offensives, Russia has cut back on human wave attacks, anecdotal evidence suggested.