RUSSIA’S 144TH DIVISION SHATTERED AS UKRAINE CLAIMS 8,000 KILLED AND 277 KM² LIBERATED 🇺🇦🇷🇺 Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps says Operation Vivaldi achieved something Moscow has repeatedly failed to accomplish: a successful offensive against a numerically superior enemy, with dramatically fewer casualties. Speaking to hromadske, Andriy Biletskyi revealed that Ukrainian forces liberated 277 square kilometres of territory and effectively destroyed Russia’s 144th Motor Rifle Division as an organised fighting force. According to Biletskyi, Ukrainian assaults killed more than 8,000 Russian soldiers and captured another 270, including over 20 officers. Two Russian battalion commanders were also killed during the operation’s final phase. He claims Ukrainian forces suffered seven times fewer total casualties than their Russian opponents. When counting fatalities alone, the difference reached approximately ten Russians killed for every Ukrainian killed. Most Ukrainian casualties were wounded, while most Russian losses were deaths, he said. The territorial figures also expose a remarkable discrepancy between Ukrainian assessments and Moscow’s claims. Ukraine calculates that 277 km² were liberated, but Biletskyi argues the same operation would represent 1,260 km² if measured against territory Russia falsely claimed to control. The strategic consequences could be substantial. Biletskyi says Moscow’s original 2026 plan involved breaking out of its Chornyi Zherebets bridgehead toward Sviatohirsk, splitting Ukrainian forces east of the Oskil River and advancing toward Barvinkove. A simultaneous offensive through Dobropillia was intended to complete an encirclement and help Russia capture the remainder of Donetsk Oblast. Operation Vivaldi disrupted those ambitions. According to Biletskyi, the 144th Division of Russia’s 20th Combined Arms Army is no longer functioning as a coherent formation. Moscow has temporarily abandoned both its wider encirclement plan and a costly frontal offensive against Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, concentrating its main effort around Dobropillia. What makes the operation particularly remarkable is the imbalance between the opposing forces. Ukraine attacked using troops already defending approximately 160 kilometres of frontline, which Biletskyi described as the longest sector in the war. Six months earlier, many of these units had been retreating. Russia had more personnel, more drones and substantially greater artillery firepower. Yet Ukrainian forces managed to reclaim territory instead of simply defending their existing positions. Biletskyi also described how Ukrainian strikes have transformed Russian logistics. Ukrainian forces can disrupt supply movements as far as 150 kilometres behind the front, he said. Russian troops who previously disembarked from vehicles just 10 to 15 kilometres from their positions must now unload 40 to 50 kilometres away and complete the remaining journey on foot. In some sectors, ammunition is transported through human supply chains, with soldiers passing artillery shells between one another over distances of 20 to 30 kilometres. On particularly successful days, Biletskyi claims Ukrainian forces destroy as many as 50 Russian vehicles. These figures and assessments remain Ukrainian military claims and have not been independently verified. Russia planned to encircle Ukrainian forces and seize the rest of Donetsk. Biletskyi says Ukraine instead reclaimed 277 km², captured 270 Russian troops and shattered a division central to Moscow’s plans.