Ukraine: 1,000 days of war – and there is a threat of further escalation

Location at a glance

Ukraine: 1,000 days of war – and there is a threat of further escalation

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has broken a sad sound barrier at 1,000 days. Moscow is shooting up Ukrainian cities with rockets – and is sharpening its tone against the West.

The 1,000th day of Russia’s war of aggression has begun in Ukraine with concerns about a further escalation of the conflict. At the front, the Ukrainian defenders are under heavy pressure, and the country’s cities are facing heavy attacks from the air. At the same time, Moscow accuses the West of escalation.

In the east of Ukraine, there are particularly fierce battles over the small town of Kurakhove, located on a reservoir in the Donetsk region. Russian troops have already managed to advance westwards south and north of Kurakhove, threatening to be surrounded. According to military observers, in order to force the conquest of the city, the Russian army has recently resorted to frontal attacks there with great losses.

A little further north, fighting is ongoing east of the city of Pokrovsk, also in Donetsk. However, the Russians have made little progress here. However, the situation has become dangerous even further north in the Kharkiv region. A small column of Russian armored vehicles was recently able to penetrate the strategically important city of Kupyansk. Even though the advance ended with the surrender of Russian soldiers, military observers like Jan Matveyev saw frightening weaknesses in the Ukrainian defenses and warned of a repeat of such a scenario on a larger scale.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who, unlike Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, has already been in the immediate vicinity of the front several times, has now visited both Pokrovsk and Kupyansk and honored soldiers. The trip probably served to boost troop morale. “We are holding our positions both in the Donetsk region and in Kharkiv,” Zelensky said in his evening video message from Kupyansk.

Figures about casualties in war should always be treated with extreme caution – now the Russian Ministry of Defense has published a count that cannot be verified. The Ukrainian armed forces are said to have complained of over 900,000 dead and wounded since the start of the war exactly 1,000 days ago. This year alone, Kiev has lost more soldiers than in the first two years of the war, the state agency Tass and the ministry claimed. Kiev’s total losses so far have been put at a total of 906,500 dead and wounded.

As a rule, the number of victims in such conflicts cannot be independently verified. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv have yet released exact figures for their respective losses.

The New York Times recently reported, citing US military and intelligence sources, that 57,000 Ukrainian soldiers had already died. This corresponds to around half of the losses on the Russian side, it was said.

NATO recently estimated Russian losses at over 600,000 dead and wounded. Western intelligence services spoke of 200,000 dead and 400,000 wounded in the Russian ranks. A list of Russian losses published by the Ukrainian side since the start of the war speaks of over 722,000 Russians killed or wounded.

Ukraine is getting help in its defensive fight from the West. Britain has trained around 50,000 soldiers from Ukraine since the start of the war. Tomorrow marks a “bloody milestone” when the illegal invasion began 1,000 days ago, Defense Minister John Healey said on Monday in Parliament in London. He could confirm that 50,000 people from Ukraine have now been trained.

The British began “Operation Interflex”, which is supported by other countries, in the summer of 2022. According to the British government, recruits are being trained who have little or no military experience. The program will continue next year.

However, the pressure is not only enormous on the front: Russia has massively increased the shelling of Ukrainian cities and civilian objects – including with long-range missiles – in the past two days. After a heavy airstrike on targets across Ukraine on Sunday, there were also many deaths and injuries on Monday after a rocket hit Odessa and one in Sumy.