The figure, based on US intelligence estimates, was announced by America’s national security spokesman John Kirby on Monday, the Reuters news agency reported.
The casualties include more than 20,000 dead, half of them from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, whose forces include convicts released from prison to join the fighting, Kirby told reporters at the White House.
Kirby said: "Russia's attempt at a winter offensive in the Donbas largely through Bakhmut has failed."
He added: "Last December, Russia initiated a broad offensive across multiple lines of advance, including toward Vuhledar, Avdiivka, Bakhmut and Kreminna. Most of these efforts stalled and failed. Russia has been unable to seize any strategically significant territory."
Kirby also said that while Russia had made some incremental gains in the eastern city of Bakhmut, they had come at a "terrible, terrible cost," adding that Ukraine's defences in the region remained strong, The Kyiv Independent website reported.
"Russia has exhausted its military stockpiles and its armed forces," according to Kirby, who added that most of Wagner’s soldiers were "Russian convicts thrown into combat in Bakhmut without sufficient combat or training, combat leadership, or any sense of organisational command and control."
Kirby said that Russia’s estimated casualty numbers were "really stunning," adding that the total was three times the number of American casualties in the 1942-1943 Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II, according to The Kyiv Independent.
Kirby said another US weapons package for Ukraine would be announced soon, the Reuters news agency reported.
Ukraine holding out in Bakhmut: officials
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces are still holding out in Bakhmut, Britain’s The Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, on Monday described the fighting for the heavily contested eastern city as “quite complicated”, but stated that Moscow "fails to take control of the city," US broadcaster CNN reported.
‘Generations of Russians will pay for war’: Ukrainian official
Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, took to the Telegram social messaging app to say that generations of Russians would pay the price for the Kremlin’s actions in the war, including the environmental damage inflicted on Ukraine’s territory, according to The Guardian.
Yermak wrote: “When we talk about the environmental damage that Russia is constantly causing as a result of strikes on Ukraine, we must make it clear to the Russians: they will have to pay for everything. For mining territories, for striking objects, as well as for killing people and abducting children.”
He added: “Unborn future generations will pay and they won’t have a choice. Moreover, these generations will have a serious problem, because they will go down in history as descendants of Russian terrorists who committed the genocide of the Ukrainian people. And it will not be possible to hide from this in any country in the world.”
Tuesday is day 433 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: Reuters, The Kyiv Independent, The Guardian, CNN