In some ways, however, the biggest setback for Ukraine hasn’t been the loss of territory so much as the loss of its best-trained and experienced troops. Russia has been imposing up to 1,000 total Ukrainian casualties per day in the Donbas. Reports suggest that Ukrainian troops evacuated Severodonetsk and Lysychansk by rubber boats. Because the Ukrainian General Staff waited too late to order the evacuation, their forces left without their equipment, abandoning large quantities of tanks, personnel carriers, and most critically, artillery pieces.
The sum total of all heavy weapons delivered or promised by the West to Ukraine has been only a small percentage of what’s actually needed but will not likely be enough to offset the substantial losses Ukraine suffered in its recent defeats, much less enable a counteroffensive in mere weeks from now. A senior Ukrainian military official admitted that even before the twin defeats in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, the UAF had lost approximately 50% of its pre-war stocks of heavy weapons. Even the arrival of a few modern Western rocket launchers will not come close to replacing these losses.
Russia, meanwhile, also suffers losses in the Donbas fight, but likely at a lower rate for two key reasons. First, they learned from their initial debacles of the invasion in February in which they made large scale advances with armor that were not adequately supported. Now, Russia prioritizes heavy bombardment, rockets, and air strikes and only brings in ground forces to fight Ukrainian troops when Russian commanders believe their enemy has been sufficiently ground down.
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