Putin ‘Failed’ in Ukraine War, Russia’s Military Weakened for Good, Pentagon Says

(Photo via Ukraine Weapons Tracker on Twitter)

The Russian military has suffered such devastating losses in the war in Ukraine, which Moscow’s bloodthirsty dictator Vladimir Putin launched nearly nine months ago, that it may never fully recover, according to a high-ranking Pentagon official.

Putin’s Military to Be Finished Off by Ukrainians and Sanctions

The chilling forecast for the future of Russia’s once much-dreaded military might and Putin’s dictatorship – with the Ukraine war still ongoing – has come from Colin Kahl, the policy undersecretary of the US Defense Department.

While Putin’s troops are suffering mind-blowing battlefield losses in Ukraine on a daily basis, the devastating Western financial and economic sanctions imposed on Moscow mean that the Russian military would have a “very difficult” time rebuilding itself, the senior Pentagon official told CNN in an interview, as cited by The Daily Mail.

The United States and its allies first slapped sanctions on Putin’s Russia in 2014 because of the Moscow tyrant’s first and “partial” invasion of Ukraine when he only seized Crimea and started an insurgency in Donbass.

According to Kahl, besides suffering “tens of thousands of casualties,” the Russian military has now lost about half of its main battle tanks. It has also expended most of its pre-war stockpile of precision missiles.

Because of the sanctions, Russia’s military-industrial complex practically has no way of producing large quantities of either since the manufacturing included many imported parts and elements, including from Ukraine.

“Putin has failed,” the Pentagon official declared, adding that Russia would come out of the war “weaker” than it was when it went in.

Kahl emphasized that the Russian leader started the war in Ukraine to try to “extinguish Ukraine.”

However, his spectacular failure now wouldn’t be changed by anything, and “Ukraine will endure” as a “sovereign, independent, and democratic” nation.

 

Russia’s Insane Military Losses

The comments by the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy confirm that Russia’s losses in the Ukraine invasion have been devastating, driven by the ferocious resistance and high efficiency of the Ukrainian defenders and America’s supplying them with top-notch weapons systems “Made in the USA.”

The last time Moscow spoke about its losses was in September when Russian Defense Minister and Putin crony Sergei Shoigu announced fewer than 6,000 were killed, a figure deemed laughable by Ukrainian and Western military experts.

Meanwhile, also in September, Putin declared a mass mobilization campaign, which officially sought to conscript 300,000 men though leaks indicated the real goal was for 1.2 million mobilized.

In July, the Pentagon said at least 75,000 Russian troops had been wounded or killed in the war in Ukraine.

However, according to the latest stats of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, as of Thursday morning, more than 78,690 official Russian military service members have been killed in battle since February 24.

The number does not include the casualties of Putin’s private mercenary armies, the riot-police-type Russian national guard, or the ethnic Russian conscripts from the Donbass region in Southeast Ukraine. Thus, according to Ukrainian observers, more than 100,000 Russian fighters have been killed in combat thus far.

Russia’s military hardware losses are no less astounding, with the latest Ukrainian estimate putting the figure at 17,343 units, including more than 2,800 main battle tanks, more than 5,600 armored personnel carriers, more than 4,200 trucks and jeeps.

It’s also suffered 278 downed warplanes and 260 downed helicopters among others.

This article appeared in The State Today and has been published here with permission.

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