Russia suffers ‘its deadliest day of the war with 1,950 killed’ – with fresh humiliation for Putin after two-day Kursk counter offensive ends with 28 tanks blown up and 100 troops dead

Russia has suffered its deadliest day of the war in Ukraine so far, with 1,950 soldiers killed in just 24 hours, according to the Ukrainian army.

Vladimir Putin’s losses in the war against Ukraine are piling up after thousands of Russian soldiers died in the last two days alone, with 1,770 soldiers being killed on Sunday and another 1,950 on Monday.

The record number of 1,950 troops dying within a day serves as fresh humiliation for Putin after his two-day Kursk counter offensive on the weekend ended with 28 tanks blown up and 100 troops killed, according to reports. 

Footage shows Russian armoured vehicles, each of them carrying about 30 troops, driving over landmines in Kursk before exploding, with some injured soldiers crawling out of the wreckages as the smoke dissipated.

Russia lost more than 710,000 troops since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion almost three years ago, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said this week.

Despite the heavy losses, Moscow is pushing forward with its ‘meat assaults’ and continues to advance at its fastest rate since 2022, with Ukraine’s armed forces chief admitting this month that it is currently facing ‘one of the most powerful’ Russian offensives since the war broke out.

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region has stalled, and Moscow has reportedly massed a force of 50,000 soldiers as it aims to reclaim the territory taken from it three months ago.

Kyiv said last week its forces had clashed with some of the estimated 11,000 North Korean soldiers sent to the region to support Moscow, with some experts saying their deployment could be partly due to the heavy Russian losses.

Volodymyr Zelensky said at the time of the August incursion into Kursk that the taking of Russian territory could serve as a bargaining chip with Moscow.

But, stretched by manpower shortages, Ukrainian forces have lost some of the ground they captured in August incursion, and have continued to lose large swathes of its own territory.

The record number of daily Russian losses on Sunday (1,770 troops) and Monday (1,950 troops), which surpasses the previous peak of 1,730 in a day back in May, is broadly in line with estimates from Western countries.

The number of Russian soldiers killed and injured averaged 1,500 ‘every single day’, UK Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Tony Radakin told the BBC on Sunday. 

Russia is making huge sacrifices in order to secure ‘tiny increments of land,’ Radakin said, but added that it continues to make ‘tactical, territorial gains,’ and is ‘putting pressure on Ukraine’.  

Sir Tony said that the Russian people were paying an ‘extraordinary price’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, saying that October was the worst month for losses since the conflict began in February 2022.

‘Russia is about to suffer 700,000 people killed or wounded – the enormous pain and suffering that the Russian nation is having to bear because of Putin’s ambition,’ he told the Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme.

The cost of the war, which he put at more than 40 per cent of public expenditure on defence and security, is also ‘an enormous drain’ on Russia.

The past weekend saw the largest drone attacks by Russia and Ukraine since the war began, with the barrages impacting large swathes of each country and hundreds of drones downed, including in the Moscow region.

Strikes have intensified amid expectations that US president-elect Donald Trump will put pressure on both sides to end the conflict.

Trump repeatedly said throughout his campaign that he could end the war ‘in a day’, without saying how.