MOSCOW. Feb 20 (Interfax) - During its 2023 counteroffensive the Ukrainian military lost over 166,000 soldiers, over 800 battle tanks, and approximately 2,400 armored combat vehicles, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said.
"Having deployed such huge forces, the enemy failed to even reach the first line of defense. The first line of defense, and there were two more after it. Having lost 166,000 dead and wounded, [...] over 800 tanks and nearly 2,400 armored combat vehicles," Shoigu told Russian journalists on Tuesday.
Russian troops destroyed more than half the Leopard tanks supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, he said.
Once the scale of the planned enemy counteroffensive became clear, the Russian military made use of all types of intelligence, including space, electronic, operational intelligence and so on, Shoigu said. Everything related to the movement of transport vehicles, by sea and by rail in particular, was kept under control.
"It was necessary to infer from the concentration of all enemy forces just what was going [to happen] by that moment, and when that moment would come," Shoigu said.