General Lapin strikes back, Russia looks for civilians in Bakhmut. What happened on the front line on May 24?

The New York Times reported that the units involved in the Belgorod raid suffered minor losses, which were “not enough to affect their combat readiness.” A senior Ukrainian official told the NYT that AFU servicemen provided support to the formations that entered Russian territory, and covered the border in case of a Russian counterattack. No Ukrainian servicemen allegedly crossed the Ukrainian-Russian border, according to the official.

Russia’s MoD remains silent on the matter of Russian losses.

The publication 7x7 reported that at least seven conscripts have been killed on the border in the Belgorod region since the start of the war. The publication said that the conscripts are formally stationed out of the combat zone as they should be by law, but in reality they come under fire and are wounded when carrying out their duties as border guards. The soldiers themselves say that they receive practically no training in shooting and handling weapons.

The mother of an 18-year-old conscript soldier who was wounded during the Belgorod incursion also confirmed that information to the Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU. According to the woman, after Russia’s military draft, the recruits were scattered across different points to guard the country’s border. The woman claimed that 25 servicemen guarded the Grayvoron area at the time of the attack, of whom one was a lieutenant, one was mobilized, and the rest were conscripts.

Meanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin spoke of the losses of the Wagner PMC in the operation to capture Bakhmut in a video interview. According to Prigozhin, there were 35,000 fighters in the ranks of the PMC at the start of the siege of the city. During the entire span of the so-called “special military operation,” 50,000 people were recruited from Russia’s prisons. 20% of them (10,000 prisoners) were killed in battle. Another 10,000 “regular” PMC fighters were also killed. This indicates that the Wagner Group’s total losses killed in action amount to 20,000 people.

Prigozhin also claimed that the AFU lost 50,000 dead only in Bakhmut (three times more than the US estimate of Ukraine’s total losses killed during the full-scale war, as of late February 2023, as stated in the leaked Pentagon documents). This assertion could shed doubt on Prigozhin's estimates.

Earlier, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had cited a total figure of 100,000 Russians killed and wounded since the beginning of the year, half of which were lost in Bakhmut, according to the official. According to a Ukrainian estimate, which was announced by Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on May 19, Russia had lost a total of 70,000 soldiers killed and wounded in Bakhmut.

Igor Girkin (Strelkov) wrote that according to his information, the losses of the Wagner PMC are “at least” one and a half times larger than described by Prigozhin. Girkin concluded that Wagner losses during the storming of Bakhmut amounted to 40,000 people “at the very minimum.” At the same time, he estimated the total losses of all Russian formations in the battles for Soledar and Bakhmut at 50,000.