Russian army suffers equivalent losses in Ukraine every 10 days as 10 years in Afghanistan – FM Sybiha

The Russian occupation forces are losing the same number of soldiers every 10 days in the war in Ukraine as they did throughout the entire war in Afghanistan. Currently, around one and a half thousand Russian soldiers are being killed and injured every day.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha stated this at a meeting of the UN Security Council, Ukrinform reports.

As the head of the Ukrainian foreign diplomatic service noted, the territory occupied by Russia in Ukraine is "the bloodiest occupied square meters in history." He also remarked that "the value placed on human life is shockingly low within the Russian Federation."

Sybiha also spoke about the shelling of residential buildings, the executions and torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war, and crimes against children.

Since 2022, Russia has killed at least 659 children, and this figure continues to grow, he said.

"The forced deportation of at least 20,000 Ukrainian children may be the largest child abduction operation ever conducted by a state," the Foreign Minister noted, adding that the Russian Federation's actions violate the Genocide Convention.

The list of atrocities committed by Russia in Ukraine also proves that the current international instruments for holding people accountable for the crime of aggression do not work, said Sybiha, calling for a precedent or changes to existing mechanisms.

According to him, Russia's rapprochement with North Korea and Iran poses threats to the entire world, as these countries want to receive technologies for missile, nuclear, and other military programs from Moscow.

"For Russia, this is also a war for natural resources. It is a very colonial approach. They are trying to seize Ukraine's rich deposits of manganese ore, uranium, titanium, and other resources," the Ukrainian foreign minister noted.

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It should be noted that, according to official data, the USSR lost about 15 thousand of its soldiers during the war in Afghanistan during 1979-1989. Some unofficial data claim that this number may be twice as high.

As of November 19, the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces estimates the total number of Russian losses since February 2022 at 724,050 service members. In the past 24 hours alone, on November 18, the Russian army suffered losses of more than 1,610 people in the war in Ukraine.

It is worth adding that, according to British intelligence, in October, the average daily losses of Russian troops in the war in Ukraine reached a new maximum and have a tendency to increase further.

In the Russian Federation alone, in the Kursk region, over the almost three months of the operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Russian army lost more than 20,000 personnel. Ukrainian defenders also destroyed 1,101 units of enemy weapons and military equipment.