Russian forces suffered an average of around 1,500 dead and injured per day in Ukraine during October, according to the UK’s chief of defence staff.
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin in a new interview with the BBC said that the Russian people were paying an ‘extraordinary price’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, saying that October was the worst month for losses since the conflict began in February 2022.
‘Russia is about to suffer 700,000 people killed or wounded – the enormous pain and suffering that the Russian nation is having to bear because of Putin’s ambition,’ he told the Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme.
He said that while Russia was making gains and putting pressure on Ukraine, the losses were ‘for tiny increments of land’.
Putin is losing 1,500 soldiers every day fighting Ukraine� -�UK
The cost of the war, which he put at more than 40 per cent of public expenditure on defence and security, is also ‘an enormous drain’ on Russia.
With the election of US president-elect Donald Trump casting doubt on US support for Ukraine, Sir Tony said Western allies would stand with Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’.
‘That’s the message President Putin has to absorb and the reassurance for President Zelensky,’ he said.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Sir Tony said the growing threat from authoritarian states, including Russia, North Korea, and the Iranian-backed Houthi movement in Yemen, is putting the international community ‘under immense strain’.
‘This is a new era of competition and contest that will last for decades and has the potential to be more disruptive to our economy and our security than anything Britain has experienced in modern times,’ he wrote.
This comes just two weeks after NATO’s secretary-general said Putin has lost more than 600,000 troops in Ukraine, forcing him to rely evermore on foreign support for his invasion.
Mark Rutte said that as a result of the heavy losses, North Korean troops have been sent to Russia’s Kursk region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed North Korea is training 10,000 soldiers to support Russia.
‘The deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea is a threat to both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security,’ Rutte told reporters after NATO officials and diplomats received a briefing from a South Korean delegation.
Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion into Kursk in August and remain in the region.
Rutte said the North Korean deployment represented ‘a significant escalation’ of Pyongyang’s involvement in ‘Russia’s illegal war’ in Ukraine, a breach of UN Security Council resolutions and a ‘dangerous expansion’ of the war.
Rutte said the deployment of North Korean troops was a sign of ‘growing desperation’ on the part of Putin.
‘Over 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Putin’s war and he is unable to sustain his assault on Ukraine without foreign support,’ Rutte said.