Kyiv (Portal) – Ukrainian forces have destroyed 278 Russian planes in eight months of fighting, more than double the number lost by the Soviet Union in its 1979-89 military intervention in Afghanistan, Ukraine’s supreme commander said on Thursday.
His statement could not be verified by Portal and there was no comment from the Russian Defense Ministry, but it fit a pattern of increasingly assertive rhetoric from Kyiv, which has made strides in retaking territory from Russian invaders.
Though civilians face power outages and intermittent water supply disruptions following Russian missile and drone strikes on energy infrastructure, the momentum on the battlefield lies with Ukraine.
Using military equipment provided by its western allies, including US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Ukraine is now increasing pressure on Russian occupying forces in the south.
“During the large-scale aggression, (Ukrainian) defenders destroyed (more than) twice as many (Russian) planes as the Soviet Union lost during the 10-year war in Afghanistan – 278 (Russian) planes in Ukraine versus 118 Soviet planes in Afghanistan.” , General Valeriy Zaluzhniy wrote on Twitter.
“This war is the same disgrace to Russia and will cause its destruction,” he wrote.
More than three decades after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the campaign there still burns in the Russian national conscience and is criticized by many Russians as a bloody foreign adventure similar to the US war in Vietnam.
Around 14,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Many were repatriated in zinc coffins known as Cargo 200, a term now commonly used for Russian soldiers killed during the war Russia began in Ukraine on February 24.
Since inception, each side has said it has inflicted huge losses on the other, but these numbers are considered grossly inflated.
Ukraine speaks of 74,000 Russian soldiers killed. Russia’s defense minister said in September that 61,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed.
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Mark Heinrich)