Reports of massive casualties: Russian 11th Army Corps almost completely wiped out?

Originally, the 11th Army Corps was to defend the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. But after Moscow’s defeats in Ukraine, the large association is relocated to the Kharkiv region. During the counter-offensive in September, the corps apparently suffered a heavy toll.

According to a Forbes report, the 11th Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces has suffered massive casualties in the war against Ukraine. The US magazine expects that it will take many months for the large association to regain even a fraction of its former strength.

The army corps was set up six years ago. Stationed in Kaliningrad, Russia’s exclave on the Baltic Sea, it also served as a threat to NATO, according to the report. Accordingly, the formation, which is subordinate to the Baltic Fleet, has a motorized division, a separate motorized regiment, as well as artillery, missile and air defense troops and support units.

Before the war broke out, there were about 12,000 Russian soldiers in Kaliningrad, with about 100 T-72 tanks and a few hundred armored personnel carriers, as well as other heavy court-martials, the report says. Much of the guns and soldiers are said to have been part of the 11th Army Corps.

After the beginning of the invasion and the Russian defeat near Kyiv, the Kremlin moved the corps via Belgorod to the Kharkiv area in eastern Ukraine in May. Three months of grueling fighting is said to have severely weakened the large association. Military documents analyzed by the Reuters news agency show that the corps was already at 71 percent of its full strength by the end of August. Some battalions had even shrunk to a tenth of their original strength.

The 11th Corps was hit particularly hard by the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region that started in September, as “Forbes” reports. At the end of September, the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) described the corps as “severely battered”. The Ukrainian General Staff became more specific. The military in Kyiv concluded that the corps lost 200 vehicles and half its soldiers as a result of the counteroffensive.

The 11th Army Corps was to defend Kaliningrad and threaten NATO’s eastern flank. Now the association can no longer fulfill both tasks, is the verdict of “Forbes”.