BY NICK MORDOWANEC ON 3/1/23 AT 12:32 PM EST
The Russian Army is on the verge of losing 150,000 soldiers
since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, according to officials in Kyiv.
In its daily Facebook update,
the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that 149,890 Russian
personnel have been killed since February 24, 2022. That includes 650 personnel
lost within the past 24 hours.
Russia has also lost 6,638 armored fighting vehicles, 5,257
vehicles and fuel tanks, 3,395 tanks, 2,393 artillery systems, 2,055 drones,
479 multiple launch rocket systems, 300 airplanes, 288 helicopters, 247 air
defense systems and 18 boats, according to the report.
A General Staff of the Armed
Forces of Ukraine report published Tuesday stated that 550 Russian troops were
killed in the previous 24 hours. Ukraine says that the Russian military has lost one-third of its fighters in just the last
two months.
Ukrainian
officials reported on December 21 that Russian casualties had surpassed 100,000,
an average of approximately 10,000 deaths per month up to that
point.
That number surpassed Russian soldiers' previous largest
casualty count since World War II.
These figures have not been
verified by Newsweek.
On February 27, the Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) published an analysis stating that Russia suffered more combat
deaths in Ukraine in the war's first year than in all wars combined since World
War II.
"The average rate of Russian soldiers killed per month is
at least 25 times the number killed per month in Chechnya and 35 times the
number killed in Afghanistan, which highlight the stark realities of a war of
attrition," the study says. "The Ukrainian military has also
performed remarkably well against a much larger and initially better-equipped
Russian military, in part due to the innovation of its forces."
A nationwide database maintained
by Mediazona and the BBC's Russian service has reported over 15,000
fatalities since launching last spring. Their figures are based solely on
deaths that can be reviewed and confirmed, including social media posts by
relatives, reports in local media, and statements by the local authorities.
"The real death toll is much higher," they report.
"Besides, the number of soldiers missing in action or captured is not
known."
The Russian Ministry of
Defense has remained relatively mum on their forces' death toll. The
Moscow Times reported that their last count was 5,937 troops
in September, while Western officials have alluded to numbers of dead or
wounded eclipsing 200,000 Russians.
Mikhail Troitskiy, professor
of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek that
it's difficult for one military faction to calculate its own losses—let alone
tally that of an adversary.
"Both sides' losses counting even in the tens of thousands
are indeed unfathomable," Troitskiy said. "Who could have imagined a
year ago that such a tragedy could be inflicted by one country on another in
Eastern Europe in the 21st century?
"Military losses apparently reflect the nature of
warfare—artillery duels and massive use of poorly equipped conscripts,
particularly on the Russian side. Much more tragic and criminal are civilian
losses in this war, and these seem for now almost certainly to be heavily
underestimated."
While neither Kyiv nor Moscow are providing precise casualty
estimates, the implications are very different, said Hilary Appel, a government
professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.
"Ukraine is under attack
and defending its own territory and right to exist," she told Newsweek.
"As a result, the Ukrainian population is far more willing to fight and
die than the Russian population, which does not have the same motivation."
"Indeed, the Kremlin uses only abstract ideas to justify
Russia's invasion of Ukraine rather than offering concrete reasons for how this
war serves the interests of ordinary Russians," Appel said. "That is
why the so-called partial mobilization was avoided for a long time in Russia
and why so many young Russia men fled the country."
Russian fighters have also
been recruited from prisons and
poor regions, she added, and are "sent to the slaughter" without
proper training and support.
"The very high estimates of Russian casualties suggest
these populations are powerless, expendable and politically
inconsequential," Appel said.
Newsweek reached
out to the Ukrainian and Russian ministries of defense for comment.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-one-skirmish-away-150000-battlefield-losses-ukraine-1784822
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