KYIV: Ukrainian forces have destroyed 278 Russian aircraft during eight months of fighting, more than twice as many as the Soviet Union lost in its 1979-89 military intervention in Afghanistan, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief said on Thursday.

His statement could not be verified and there was no comment from the Russian defence ministry, but it fit into a pattern of increasingly confident rhetoric from Kyiv as it has made progress in retaking territory from Russian forces.

Though civilians face power outages and intermittent water supply cuts after Russian missile and drone strikes on energy infrastructure, the momentum on the battlefield is with Ukraine.

With the help of military equipment provided by its Western allies, including US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Ukraine is now mounting pressure on Russian forces in the south.

“During the full-scale aggression, (Ukrainian) defenders destroyed (more than) twice as many (Russian) aircraft as the Soviet Union lost during the 10-year war in Afghanistan _ 278 (Russian) aircraft in Ukraine against 118 Soviet aircraft in Afghanistan,” Gen Valeriy Zaluzhniy wrote on Twitter.

“This war is the same shame for Russia & will cause its destruction,” he wrote.

More than three decades after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the military campaign there remains seared on the Russian national conscience and is criticised by many Russians as a bloody foreign adventure akin to the US invasion of Vietnam.

Around 14,000 Soviet troops were killed in Afghanistan. Many were repatriated in zinc coffins known as Cargo 200, a term that is now being widely used for Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine since Feb 24.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2022