Unexpected Number Of Russian Federation Army Losses Announced In Britain

The average is 983 people killed and wounded per day.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has lost more than 355,000 servicemen killed and wounded, has calculated the Intelligence of the British Defence Ministry. According to its estimates, in February this year the daily figures reached the maximum values since the beginning of the war. Thus, the Russian army was losing an average of 983 people killed and wounded per day.

The sharp rise indicates Russia's willingness to wage a war of attrition with the involvement of unlimited forces. "Although costly in terms of human lives, such tactics increase the pressure on Ukraine's positions along the entire front line," the intelligence states.

In February, the Russian army captured Avdiivka in Donetsk region. The battle for the town was one of the bloodiest since the war began: for months, Russian commanders did not hesitate to send squad after squad into the meat grinder so that President Vladimir Putin would have something to present to his electorate before the elections.

The Russian army has a "different pain threshold" and an "unconventional" idea of what constitutes acceptable combat losses, a senior Western official told The New York Times. Also in February, there were several cases of soldiers dying en masse while having an assembly in a combat zone.

In mid-February, the Pentagon estimated the number of Russian military deaths at 60,000 and total losses in killed and wounded at 315,000. That's nearly 90 per cent of the personnel the Russian Defence Ministry had before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"The losses will not stop Russia. It still has superiority in manpower on the front line and can continue to conduct attacks on many fronts," Rob Lee, a military expert and senior fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted.

As of February 21, 2024, journalists of Mediazona and BBC Russian Service managed to confirm the deaths of more than 45.1 thousand Russian servicemen on the basis of open sources. Taking into account data from Rosstat and the Register of Hereditary Cases, the number of those killed could be between 66,000 and 88,000 soldiers.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that 180,000 Russian servicemen were killed during the two years of war, and with those wounded, the total number of losses reached 500,000.

The Russian Defence Ministry does not disclose the losses.