Ukraine has "broken Russia's ability to advance" by inflicting heavy casualties on Russian forces, according to General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's former commander-in-chief, in an exclusive interview with the BBC published Tuesday.
Syrskyi said Ukraine has stabilized the front line through sustained attrition of Russian personnel. He claimed Russia's overall war losses were six times higher than Ukraine's, and that the ratio reached 11 times when counting only fatalities.
Russian independent outlet Mediazona identified the names of 258,989 Russian military personnel killed in Ukraine in an investigation conducted weeks before Syrskyi's statement. British intelligence agency GCHQ said in May that nearly 500,000 Russian troops have been killed since Moscow launched the war in February 2022.
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies estimated Ukrainian forces had suffered between 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities as of June 2026, while estimating Russian losses at between 400,000 and 450,000 in the same period.
Syrskyi made the comments in his first interview since being forced from his post in the summer following a public disagreement with Ukraine's defence minister. In the interview, he addressed criticism from those who declared him too "old school" to command Ukraine's technologically advanced forces.
He also responded to allegations made by soldiers who previously served under him. Those soldiers told the BBC they were ordered to remain at their positions even when nearly surrounded by Russian forces, resulting in high losses. Syrskyi pushed back against these allegations in his BBC interview.