The Russian armed forces On Saturday they reported the downing of two MiG-29 fighter jets piloted by Ukrainian soldiers and 92 drones hit. Two Himars system missiles supplied by the US to Kiev also reported interception, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, which added that 1,035 Ukrainian soldiers had died at the front in the last few hours.
The MiG-29 is a Soviet design from the 1970s that plays a crucial role in the war. Poland and Slovakia have delivered dozens of these devices to Kiev. The facilities in Warsaw date back to the early 1990s, while in Slovakia they have not been used since last summer due to lack of maintenance. Ukraine began the war with an air fleet of 69 aircraft, just over half of which were MiG-29s and the rest other Soviet models such as the SU-27 fighters and SU-24 bombersin addition to the L-39, Czechoslovakian light attack and training aircraft.
The Russian authorities have been saying this since the beginning of the war 574 Ukrainian military aircraft, 267 helicopters, 13,315 drones, 473 anti-aircraft missile systems and 15,207 tanks were destroyed and other armored fighting vehicles. The Russian Defense Ministry also claims that its forces destroyed 1,223 vehicles with multiple rocket launcher systems, 8,152 field artillery pieces and mortars, and 19,030 special military vehicles.
The Kremlin forces also claim this after capturing about 200 Ukrainian soldiers in the recently captured Moscow city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region.
The capture of this city was very serious for Moscow in terms of loss of life. This week it was revealed that Russia lost around 16,000 soldiers in the capture of Avdiivka. This is what Russian blogger and military affairs expert Andrei Morózov, nicknamed Murz, who committed suicide this week due to harassment from the Russian high command, told us. An anonymous source told the blogger that, according to his calculations, Russia also lost about 300 armored vehicles, while the Ukrainian army lost at most a third of these casualties; “in the best case” between 5,000 and 7,000 combatants. He also pointed out that the Ukrainians would have managed a successful withdrawal even without being surrounded.