Russia has likely suffered its highest rate of casualties since the beginning of the war in the past 2 weeks, UK Defense Ministry says

• In the last 2 weeks, Russian casualties are likely the highest since the war began, the UK said.
• The Ukrainian General Staff estimated that the mean average for the last seven days was 824 Russian casualties.

In the last two weeks, Russia has likely suffered its highest rate of casualties since the first week of its invasion of Ukraine, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

The Ukrainian General Staff said that the mean average for the last seven days was 824 Russian casualties per day, which is over four times the rate reported in June and July 2022, the UK ministry said in an intelligence update on Sunday.

While the department said it could not verify Ukraine's methodology, it said that the trends are likely accurate.

The reason for the increase in Russian casualties is due to various factors, including a lack of trained personnel, coordination, and resources across the front, which the ministry notes can be seen in Bakhmut and Vuhledar.

The Ministry of Defence noted that Ukraine has also suffered high losses.

Ukraine claimed on Tuesday that 1,030 Russian troops had been killed in the previous 24 hours, which would have marked the deadliest day for Russian forces in the war so far.

While it is difficult to accurately track the death toll of the war, Western officials estimate that Russia could be approaching nearly 200,000 casualties.

That toll, in less than a year of the war, is eight times higher than all American casualties in two decades of war in Afghanistan.

In recent months fierce fighting has been raging in the eastarn Ukraine, with Russia trying to take the city of Bakmut in Donetsk Oblast.

Mercenaries from the Russian private military company Wagner Group have played a large role in the war in Ukraine, particularly in Bakhmut and its surrounding areas.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner Group, said in a video published on Friday that he believed the fighting in Ukraine could continue for several years, Reuters reported.

He said that it could take one and a half to two years for Russian forces to completely capture the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, which Moscow last year claimed as "republics" of Russia in an internationally condemned move.

However, if the goal was to occupy territory up to the Dnipro River, this could take about three years, he said.

Although Prigozhin does not speak for the Russian military, his comments provide insight into Russian expectations of the war.