“Militarily, Russia has lost a substantial part of its conventional forces. Hundreds of aircraft. Thousands of tanks. And more than 300,000 casualties,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said following the first meeting of foreign ministers of the NATO-Ukraine Council, held on Wednesday in Brussels.
However, Stoltenberg added, despite what he called “Putin’s strategic mistake” in invading Ukraine, NATO “must not underestimate Russia… Russia’s economy is on a war footing.”
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“Putin has a high tolerance for casualties, and Russian aims in Ukraine have not changed,” he said.
According to official figures from the Ukrainian military’s General Staff, Moscow’s forces have lost 327,580 troops, more than 650 fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft and approximately 16,000 tanks and armored vehicles in the 21months of the war.
Reminding the press conference that Russia has accumulated a large stockpile of missiles in their presumed winter offensive on civilian targets, Stoltenberg stressed that there already have been “new attempts to strike Ukraine’s power grid and energy infrastructure. He noted that 20 members of the Alliance last week “agreed to form an air-defense coalition for Ukraine.”
“This will help protect Ukraine’s armed forces and cities and save Ukrainian lives,” Stoltenberg said.
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