World News | Over 20,000 Russian fighters killed since December 2022: US

washington [US]May 2 (ANI): More than 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and more than 100,000 wounded since December 2022, White House official John Kirby said, CNN reported.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Kirby said Russia had “depleted its military stockpile and armed forces,” with the U.S. estimating more than 100,000 Russian casualties since December, including more than 20,000 in combat killed.

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Kirby, who serves as the National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator, noted that nearly half of the casualties were fighters from the private Russian company Wagner Corporation.

Kirby slammed recent claims by Wagnerian leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who said on Sunday that his group suffered only 94 casualties. Kirby called Prigozhin’s comments “just a ridiculous claim.”

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Pressed on the source of the new 100,000 figure, Kirby said it was “based on some de-escalation intelligence that we were able to gather”. He declined to provide information on Ukrainian casualties, noting that the U.S. “never” provided such information and would defer to Ukraine on the matter, according to CNN.

Kirby added that Ukrainians “are the victims here, Russia is the aggressor, and I’m not going to release the information at all, and it’s going to make it harder for Ukrainians again.”

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military said it was engaged in a “struggle for positions” as the fierce battle at Bahmut continued to rage, adding that it had been able to repel Russian forces after a series of counterattacks.

“I can confirm with certainty that after some of our counterattacks, Bakhmut’s enemies left some positions,” Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the eastern bloc of Ukraine’s armed forces, told a state broadcaster.

“There is a positional struggle there,” Cherevati said, explaining that the front lines were constantly shifting.

“Sometimes the enemy has some success after a strong shelling and infrastructure is destroyed, and they can move on. But we fight back and often win back our positions after firing on the enemy,” Cherevatyi added.

Earlier on Monday, a Russian freight train derailed in the western region of Bryansk on the border with Ukraine after an “explosive device” detonated on the tracks, the governor of the region said, the Moscow Times reported.

“An unknown explosive device detonated and derailed the locomotive of a freight train,” Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz said in a telegram.

The device crashed on the “136th kilometer” of the railway between the regional hub Bryansk and the town of Unecha, towards the Ukrainian border, Bogomaz said. “There were no casualties,” he added.

Images shared on social media showed dark gray smoke billowing into the air as several tank carriages of a train lay on their sides at the derailment site in the Bryansk region.

The attack came a day after Ukrainians went on strike in a Russian village in the Bryansk region, killing four people, and as Kiev prepared for a widely expected counteroffensive, the Moscow Times reported.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces carried out missile attacks on Ukrainian military targets overnight, according to the state-owned Ria news agency.

All designated targets, including weapons depots and ammunition factories, were hit, the Ministry of Defense said. (Arnie)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the body of content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)