Soldiers, tanks, armored vehicles, cannons, planes, ships… Every day, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine publishes fresh statistics on the losses of Russian invaders, presented in a clear infographic. Most of the columns are clear, killing a soldier or destroying an armor can be imagined by everyone. However, the category of “special equipment” often hides much more valuable interventions that the Russian war machine may not replace so easily – radars, means of electronic warfare, mine clearance vehicles… The losses of such things hurt the Russian army enough.
As of the first of February, the last column of “estimated enemy losses” counted 1,462 pieces of special equipment – an increase of ten over the previous day. By the New Year, it was 1,277 pieces, an increase of 175 in the first month of this year, the highest of all 23 months of the war, Newsweek magazine states. The second strongest month in this regard was July 2023, with the disposal of 135 pieces of special equipment.
“Ukraine is targeting equipment that keeps Russia’s military running behind the front lines and allows it to sustain the parallel offensives that Moscow has launched,” explains Newsweek. According to experts, these are radars and electronic warfare systems (for example, jamming of communications including control of drones), as well as engineering equipment (mining vehicles, excavators, mobile bridges…). It also includes the support and service vehicles required to maintain the functionality of combat assets.
“Ukrainian forces hunt for such equipment,” former Ukrainian colonel Serhii Hrabsky told Newsweek. An example of such plans was the destruction of several radars on mining towers in the Black Sea, which disabled air defenses over Crimea and allowed Ukrainian missiles to hit the Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol including a submarine and landing craft. And they manage to send kamikaze drones even to Moscow and St. Petersburg, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told Fokus.
Detailed statistics on losses of military equipment are compiled by the Oryx project – the so-called intelligence from verified sources (osint for short). For example, Oryx counted the decommissioned Russian radars as of February 1, 1961 – 40 destroyed, 11 damaged, 10 captured by Ukrainians. And then maybe 70 jammers, 268 command posts/vehicles and communication stations or 433 engineering vehicles – including 33 UR-77 Meteorite mine clearance vehicles, dozens of bridge tanks/cars and pontoons and so on. In total, Oryx registers 14,159 items of all Russian losses, the Ukrainian total is triple (52,354).
Indeed, Oryx consistently documents every single destruction, elimination or capture with a photo or video; it is not possible to independently verify whether Kyiv is exaggerating the enemy’s losses as part of propaganda and supporting the morale of soldiers, citizens and allies.
