"In Four Days, Russia Has Lost A Brigade And A Half"
- 23.03.2026, 15:59
The Russian army's spring offensive has already failed.
Russia's spring-summer offensive has resulted in colossal losses in manpower for the Russian army. How critical are such losses for the Russian army and how long will it be able to advance? About this site Charter97.org talked to Ukrainian military and political observer of the group "Information Resistance" Alexander Kovalenko:
- For the first four days of the offensive campaign of the Russian army they lost actually one and a half brigades. As of today, we can say that during the week of active combat operations they lost more than 8,700 personnel wounded and killed, but at the same time the occupiers captured no more than 28 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory.
This is the lowest figure for the entire period of large-scale invasion of Ukraine among those offensive operations undertaken by Russia. Therefore, we can say that their spring/summer 2026 offensive campaign itself is already a failure. It is already a failure.
How long will they be able to carry it out? Only when reinforced with manpower. They will need to take as much human resource as possible from reserves or through mobilization in the near future. In this regard, unless there is a general mobilization in Russia, they will not be able to cope with such losses. They will not be able to continue such an offensive. The Russian army will be forced to go on the defensive.
Do they have the ability to hold the defenses? This will also depend on manpower. Since practically all combat and general military actions that are now being carried out by Russian troops are actions of infantry components. They are exclusively focused on infantry now. Without manpower, they cannot continue this war.
- Russia is already transporting mobilized from Crimea and drawing on reserves. Is it possible to say that the resource of "volunteers" is exhausted? Voluntary mobilization is about 22 thousand personnel per month. And this is not enough to compensate for the losses in the combat zone. So we are talking about a shortage, but not that Russia has no human resources.
The solution may be this: general mobilization, that is, repressive mobilization, as in 2022. This is so-called partial mobilization. They decided to get out of the situation without calling everything by its name, and to call up a large number of human resources within a month, just take people without training, without passing at least a minimum of three months of basic training and send them straight to the war zone.
- In the Russian Federation, blockades and control over the Internet are intensifying. Could this be just a preparation for mobilization and an attempt to prevent internal discontent?
- Yes, of course. This is one of the integral elements that will reinforce these mobilizations, repressive in the long run. Plus, perhaps, the opening of some new theater of combat operations, where attention will be focused and where it will be necessary for the information space of the Russian Federation to have an exclusively Russian point of view, that is, in fact, Russian propaganda.