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According to a recently released US intelligence report, Russia has suffered a significant number of casualties in Ukraine, with 315,000 troops either killed or injured. This accounts for nearly 90 percent of the total soldiers deployed during the initial invasion.
According to a source familiar with the assessment, the 22-month conflict has caused significant personnel losses for Vladimir Putin, resulting in a setback of 18 years for Russia’s military modernization efforts.
The figures indicate a significantly higher total than what Russian authorities have acknowledged, and exceed Western calculations of casualties in Ukraine.
In February of last year, Russia initiated a comprehensive attack on Ukraine, deploying a total of 360,000 soldiers. Despite unsuccessful efforts to quickly seize the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, Moscow has since conducted multiple significant recruitment campaigns to reinforce their troops on the front lines and replace fatigued personnel.
The estimated number of Russian casualties at 315,000 would make up approximately 87% of the initial count of troops deployed by Moscow in the Ukrainian war. However, the US evaluation does not specify whether the figure includes forces that were later sent by Russia to the conflict.
Russia has been forced to implement drastic measures in order to maintain its fighting capabilities due to the severity of its losses. In late 2022, they declared a partial mobilization of 300,000 individuals and have also lowered their recruitment standards to include convicts and older civilians. This information was stated in the assessment.
Based on the report, Mr. Putin entered Ukraine with 3,100 tanks, but has since lost 2,200 of them and now only has 1,300 tanks remaining in the battlefield. To compensate for the loss, Russia has had to use older Soviet-era T62 tanks from the 1970s, which are currently still in use.
There has been no response from Russia regarding the reported losses. The only official statement they have made about casualties in the Ukraine conflict was in September 2022, where they reported 5,937 deaths. However, both Ukrainian and Western intelligence believe this number to be significantly lower than the actual casualties.
Although Moscow and Kyiv have kept their battlefield losses confidential, Russian officials have dismissed the West’s estimates as “greatly exaggerated” and claim that they consistently underestimate Ukrainian casualties.
According to a report by the New York Times in August of this year, officials in the US approximated that Ukraine had experienced nearly 70,000 casualties.
In the previous month, historian Yaroslav Tynchenko and volunteer Herman Shapovalenko announced that their Book of Memory project had verified 24,500 fatalities among Ukrainian soldiers and civilians through publicly available information. However, they also believed that the actual number could be even greater.
In the current month, Putin has given the directive to further boost the country’s military enlistment initiatives, with the aim of adding approximately 170,000 troops to reach a total of 1.32 million.
Mr Putin said he signed the decree in response to “the aggressive activities of the Nato bloc” and in order to further the aims of the special military operation in Ukraine, the phrase the Kremlin uses – and forces Russian media to use – to describe its invasion.
Source: independent.co.uk
