As the war drags on in Ukraine, its civilians are again suffering. Thirty-eight people were killed in the village of Myla on August 29, when a Russian drone attack struck an ammunition depot. Another 12 were killed in attacks across the country on September 1.
Civilian deaths have sharply increased this summer as Russia is using jet-powered drones, which fly at about half the speed of a passenger jet and are more difficult to intercept than propeller-powered drones. Jet-powered drones numbered about 2,800 in August, said Ukraine Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, compared with about 1,500 in July, several times the number launched in June. Ukraine has an interception rate of more than 90 percent against propeller-powered drones, but only 60 percent against the jet-powered variant, Ihnat said.
Ukraine said Russian forces suffered 42,020 casualties last month, as Moscow’s territorial gains dropped to a fraction of last year’s rate of advance. Ukrainian armed forces figures showed Russia’s monthly casualties were only slightly below July’s 42,860 and well above the 39,290 in June. Al Jazeera cannot independently verify casualty estimates by either side, but if accurate, those summer figures – 25.8 percent higher than the casualties Ukraine inflicted in the spring – suggest the high Russian casualty rate is not a passing event.
Russian recruitment rates are thought to be well below those totals, estimated by Ukraine at about 32,500 a month this year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly shared intelligence suggesting that Russian leader Vladimir Putin will conscript 300,000 or more troops next month. Zelenskyy has said that up to 80 percent of Russian casualties were inflicted in Kostiantynivka, the southernmost of Ukraine’s “fortress belt” of cities in the eastern Donetsk region, whose capture Putin has repeatedly prioritised.
Russian forces are thought to control only a portion of the city, but have infiltrated more than 70 percent of it with scattered individual troops sent to drop supplies and await reinforcements. Ukrainian drone operators have been targeting the troops as Russia replenishes them. This week it was revealed that Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Mykhailo Drapatyi, reinforced the Donetsk front around Sloviansk and Dobropillia, north and south of Kostiantynivka, respectively, but kept the Kostiantynivka front largely unchanged.
That suggests Ukraine may be adopting the tactic of fighting a prolonged rearguard in the urban landscape to inflict attritional losses, as it did in the battles of Bakhmut, Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar. The fight for Kostiantynivka has sapped troop strength elsewhere on the front line, where Ukraine liberated 130sq km (50 square miles) of its land in August, limiting Russia’s overall advance. Russia seized just over 90sq km (35 square miles) in August, estimated the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that assesses territorial gains using open-source geolocated sources.
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