Russia’s military has lost almost 200,000 servicemen in the Ukraine War, including the wounded and the injured, The New York Times provides estimates by American and other Western officials.
Russia’s losses almost doubled in the last three months, NYT says. The Russian military sends poorly trained recruits and former convicts to the front lines near Bakhmut and Soledar, straight into the path of Ukrainian shelling and machine guns. The result, American officials say, is hundreds of troops killed or injured a day.
In Bakhmut, hundreds of Ukrainian troops have been wounded and killed daily at times as well, officials said. Better trained infantry formations are kept in reserve to safeguard them, while lesser prepared troops, such as those in the territorial defence units, are kept on the front line and bear the brunt of shelling.
Establishing precise numbers is extremely difficult, and estimates vary, even within the US government, NYT says. Moscow is also believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured.
The last public Biden administration estimate of casualties came last November, when General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that more than 100,000 troops on each side had been killed and wounded since the war began. At the time, officials said privately that the numbers were closer to 120,000.
Last time the Russian Defence Ministry officially reported losses was on 21 September, the day the mobilisation was declared. The Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said back then that 5,937 Russian servicemen had been killed in Ukraine. However, BBC in Russian noted at that time that more verified names of the killed servicemen were already known than the Defence Ministry figures indicated.
Mediazona and BBC in Russian have verified the identities of 13,300 killed Russian servicemen as of 3 February 2023.
