Russia to Mobilize Half a Million New Troops by 2024 as Both Sides Claim 90,000 Enemy Losses since June 4

Russia to Mobilize Half a Million New Troops by 2024 as Both Sides Claim 90,000 Enemy Losses since June 4

Richard Abelson

Russia has mobilized 357,000 new troops and may muster as many as half a million by year’s end as Ukraine struggles to find new fighting forces. Both sides estimate the enemy has lost about 90,000 men since the start of the Ukrainian Spring counteroffensive June 4.

Ukraine’s armed forces have lost more than 90,000 servicemen killed and wounded during the counteroffensive launched June 4 without achieving any significant battlefield successes, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed, speaking at the 10th Beijing Xiangshan Forum.

“Since as recently as 4 June – that is, since the beginning of the widely publicized Ukrainian counteroffensive that has been so generously supported by the West – Kiev has lost more than 90,000 servicemen killed and wounded, about 600 tanks and almost 1,900 armored vehicles of various classes. At the same time, no tactically significant successes have been achieved on the battlefield,” Sergei Shoigu said.

Shoigu accused the US of ignoring Russia’s legitimate security interests, expanding NATO and “forcing” Russia to invade Ukraine.

“Disregarding Russia’s legitimate security rights, the White House has persistently pursued the eastward expansion of the NATO bloc it controls”, Shoigu said. “These aggressive moves have forced us to take countermeasures.”

“The West openly took a course on inflicting a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia in the hybrid war unleashed against us. Ukraine was cynically chosen as a battering ram, and assigned the role of merely expendable material,” Shoigu stated.

Shoigu warned that the Biden Regime’s “steadily escalating conflict with Russia carries the threat of a direct military clash between the nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences”.

“The US and NATO continue to seriously expect that they will be able to undermine Russia’s security and deprive us of the will to resist”, Shoigu noted.

“But the situation in the special military operation zone demonstrates the futility of these plans’, the Russian Minister of Defence said.

Observers, including Col. Douglas MacGregor and Robert F. Kennedy, had claimed Ukraine had lost approx. 350,000 men before the start of the offensive. That would put Ukrainian losses in the war at 440,000 (killed, wounded, captured, and missing).