The Kremlin disputed a recently released U.S. assessment that said Russian forces had faced 100,000 casualties in Ukraine since December.
“Washington has absolutely no way to give any correct numbers, and this is how it should be treated. You need to focus on the numbers that the Ministry of Defense will publish in due time,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on a call with reporters on Tuesday, according to CNN.
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A day earlier, National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters that Russia "suffered more than 100,000 casualties" in the battle for the strategically insignificant city of Bakhmut, Ukraine. Twenty thousand of them were killed in action.
"Just since December, we estimated that Russia has suffered more than 100,000 casualties, including over 20,000 killed in action, nearly half of whom were Wagner soldiers, the majority of whom were Russian convicts that were thrown into combat embarking without sufficient combat or combat training," Kirby told reporters on Monday.
"The bottom line is that Russia's attempted offensive has backfired. After months of fighting and extraordinary losses. Russia continues to be focused on a single Ukrainian city with limited strategic value. Ukraine's armed forces are defending the territory bravely and effectively and making Russia expend enormous resources for marginal gains," he said.
The comments about Russia's casualty total in Ukraine come as Kyiv is expected to launch its highly anticipated counteroffensive, where they will look to retake Russian-occupied territories, mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the country. Ukraine's Western allies have been preparing Ukraine for this offensive for months now, providing them with billions of dollars of ammunition, air defense systems, and armored vehicles, among many other systems, while also training Ukrainian forces on the more sophisticated weapons.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on national television Monday that the military was "reaching the finish line" in preparing for its highly anticipated counteroffensive to take back Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory and that the commanders will decide "how, where and when."
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Russia's Ministry of Defense does not consistently update its number of casualties, and it hasn't done so since last September. At the time, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said 5,937 soldiers had been killed, a number that was significantly lower than figures provided by Western countries.
Shoigu appeared to respond to Kirby's announcement on Tuesday, saying that “despite the unprecedented military assistance from Western countries, the enemy is suffering significant losses. Over the past month alone, they have lost more than 15,000 people."