Ukraine Has Actually Gained Tanks During War While Russia Has Lost Hundreds

Ukraine's army now has more tanks at its disposal than it did at the start of the war with Russia one month ago, while the Russian military has lost hundreds, reports suggest.

Russia had lost 530 tanks as of March 24, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including some that were captured by Ukrainian forces.

The ministry also said that more than 15,800 Russian military personnel have been killed since the beginning of the conflict.

Forbes, citing Oryx, a military website that monitors open-source information on social media to work out losses of military equipment during the war, on Friday said that Ukraine has lost at least 74 tanks since Russia started the war on February 24, but it had captured at least 118 Russian tanks. This means that Ukraine has more tanks than it did at the start of the conflict.

Of the 74 lost tanks Ukraine has lost, Russia has captured at least 38, according to Oryx.

Newsweek has contacted the ministries of foreign affairs of Russia and Ukraine about the numbers.

Despite hugely outnumbering the Ukrainian army—with some 190,000 troops—the Russian military is not making as much headway as expected in Ukraine, and its losses are heavier. A senior NATO official estimated on Wednesday that Russia could have lost as many as 15,000 troops in the war.

Moscow has not released updated casualty numbers since a week after the invasion—the last time it did it said 498 of its troops had died and 1,597 had been wounded. Official death tolls have been hard to verify during the conflict because the ferocity of fighting was making it hard to count the dead.

Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine's ombudsperson, said on Thursday that 402,000 people, including 84,000 children, had been taken to Russia. The Kremlin offered nearly identical numbers but said those people wanted to leave.

Reuters reported that Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, a senior Pentagon official, said that Russia was running out of precision guided munitions and is more likely to mainly use so-called "dumb bombs" and artillery going forward. The Russian onslaught has been focused on cities and the army has been accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians.

Kahl said that he did not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted an all-out confrontation with NATO, which so far has not intervened in the war.

U.S. President Joe Biden met with NATO leaders in Brussels on Thursday to discuss further sanctions on Russia and bolstering the alliance's eastern flank. Biden will travel to the Polish town of Rzeszow, near the Ukrainian border, on Friday, to meet Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in a show of solidarity and Western resolve against the Russian invasion.