The fields and roadsides to the village of Strozewe, Donetsk Oblast, which was liberated by Ukrainian forces, were littered with dead crew members and burned armored vehicles in the neighborhood of destroyed Russian tanks.

  On June 12, 2023, the Ukrainian military announced the liberation of the village of Storozheve, Donetsk Oblast, which had been under Russian occupation since March 2022. The fields and roadsides leading to the liberated village of Storozheve were littered with dead crew members and burned armored vehicles in the neighborhood of destroyed Russian tanks. The Ukrainian military reported that about 50 Russian soldiers were killed in action during the liberation sweep, and four were taken prisoner. In the village of Strozewe itself, houses damaged by shelling can be seen. 

Warning: The body of a Russian soldier is seen near a destroyed Russian tank near the front line in the newly liberated village Storozheve in Donetsk region, Ukraine, June 14, 2023. (REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak)

   Russian counties claimed to have thwarted a major offensive on June 4, which they considered the start date of the Ukrainian counteroffensive; on June 5, Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Defense said the Ukrainian military had carried out offensive actions in several directions. The American Institute for the Study of War announced that Ukrainian forces launched a broad counterattack on June 4; on June 6, the Kahoka Dam on the Dnipro River in Herzon Oblast was breached.

　According to a project of the BBC in the UK and the independent Russian media outlet Mediazona, the war with Ukraine has resulted in the deaths of some 25,528 Russian soldiers. About 2,498 of them were mobilized. The casualties included about 2,150 more officers in the Russian military and other law enforcement agencies. About 161 military pilots were also confirmed dead. A joint project of the BBC in the UK and Mediazona in Russia published on June 16, 2023. Only those deaths identified by publicly available sources, such as documents, messages from relatives, and grave data, were analyzed. The Russian Ministry of Defense has not published data on human losses and does not comment on figures reported by journalists.

　It noted that the largest number of casualties were prisoners. The highest number of deaths were from the Krasnodar-Krai, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Bashkiria, Buryatia, and Volgograd regions. The highest number of deaths were from the Buryatia, Buryatia, Volgograd, and Volgograd regions.

  A dead Russian soldier is examined near the front line in the newly liberated village of Strozewe in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, June 14, 2023 (REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak). Strozewe village is one of the settlements near the Mokry Yary River, where some of the corpses of Russian soldiers were left in a marshy area in a nearby field.

Warning: The body of a Russian soldier is seen near the front line in the newly liberated village Storozheve in Donetsk region, Ukraine, June 14, 2023. (REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak)