London, Apr. 11, (dpa/GNA) - Russia is trying to absorb mounting troop losses in Ukraine with the help of former military personnel, according to British intelligence.
Russian forces are seeking to boost their troop levels with personnel who have been discharged from military service since 2012, the British Defence Ministry said on Sunday in its regular intelligence update.
Efforts to gain more combat power include trying to recruit forces in the Russian separatist-controlled Transnistria region of Moldova, it said.
It is unclear how many Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, admitted on Thursday that Russia had suffered a “significant” number of troop deaths.
In the West, according to the BBC, it is assumed that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed so far.
Nonetheless, the governor of the embattled Luhansk region assumes that the Russians will soon launch a major offensive in eastern Ukraine.
“It is a matter of days,” Serhiy Hajday told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “They are repositioning themselves on the border and continue to bomb us. They don’t know morality any more: they raze hospitals, schools and houses to the ground.”
Moscow-backed separatists have controlled the south-eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known collectively as the Donbass, for almost eight years.
Putin recognized the self-proclaimed “people’s republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states shortly before invading Ukraine.
GNA