The Russian military had lost 62,400 soldiers in Kursk Oblast since the start of the Ukrainian army’s operation there last year, Ukraine’s General Staff said on April 26.
Of this number, 25,200 were “irreversible” losses and 36,200 were injuries, according to the statement.
“Another 983 soldiers of the (Russian) army were taken prisoner. As a result, exchanges took place, which allowed hundreds of our soldiers to return home from Russian captivity,” the General Staff said.
The statement comes as Russian authorities claimed earlier that day to have fully recaptured the territory of Kursk Oblast and confirmed the participation of North Korean troops in the campaign.
i know it’s very probably never going to happen,
but sometimes i wonder if russia is actually so overleveraged on their invasion that ukraine might have actually been able to march right into moscow and wipe it off the map if they tried.
That literally almost happened:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group_rebellion
Backstory: there was this infamous Russian mercenary company called Wagner. They had a ton of support from Russian nationalists. During the Ukraine war, Putin decided its populist leader’s head was a little too big, so he plopped them on the front lines, undersupplied, and ground them down to keep Wagner in their place, and from growing too powerful.
The leader was not stupid.
So, seeing the existential problem, Wagner, out of the blue, rushed out of Ukraine and made a beeline for Moscow with a big military convoy. There was a lot of political noise, but basically it was a coup.
Ultimately, Wagner realized not enough of the Russian military was turning to their side and stopped (and it leader was literally blown up in a plane some months later), but the crazy thing is some Russian military did defect! Others let them pass without any resistance! And like you said, Moscow didn’t have a lot of defense.
But it was so close to working its nuts! Foreign militaries watched it very closely. The Wikipedia article and ISW reports on it are worth reading, and it’s all an interesting window into internal Russian politics/culture, as Wagner is not the only internal faction that’s a potential threat to Putin.
EDIT: Found the ISW post, so you can see how tense things felt in real time.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-23-2023
(More generally, those reports are great source for detailed Ukraine war info).
Other countries should move their armies near Russian borders and waters just to keep them on their toes and prevent them from redeploying those troops to Ukraine.