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Russian Military Personnel - Casualties

It took 15,000 deaths to force Soviets out of Afghanistan. The wives and mothers of the Russia's dead soldiers in Afghanistan staged protests that led to the withdrawal of the Russian army from that country.

Under the Russian system soldiers from the mercenary groups like Wagner, and the rebel groups of the LPR, and DPR don't get counted as Russian army deaths, this is why there were so many Russian conscripts complaining they have been signed over to the LPR and DPR - Putin doesn't want their deaths counted as Russian army deaths.

By 10 June 2022 the number of Russian soldiers killed since Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine could now be as high as 20,000, according to the latest assessment by western officials. Previous estimates, given several weeks ago, were about 15,000. The official did not speculate on the number of Ukrainians killed in the war.

A leaked document from a Russian government agency stated that as of August 2022 48K+ Russian soldiers had died, making an avg of 8,000 per month.

On 17 March 2023, BBC News Service Russia estimated from publicly available data that up to 47,000 men had died on the Russian side.

In April 2023 dozens of classified US Defense Department documents - maps, charts and photographs - were circulating on the internet. The US estimated that between 189,500 and 223,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded. The Pentagon said it had "low confidence" in the figures, due to gaps in information, operational security and deliberate attempts, probably by both sides, to mislead.

By June 2023, BBC " identified more than 25,000 named individuals - people we know to have died - setting a bare minimum for Russia's total losses. The count provides hard evidence of the war's impact on Russian forces. But it has also given answers to grieving families. Some relatives did not even know what had happened to their loved ones until the BBC traced them." These are only confirmed fatalities. These are only the graves of soldiers whose bodies were (1) retrieved (2) transported home, and (3) whose deaths or burials were publicly announced — i.e. by family in local papers. Prigozhen states that over 20,000 Wagner were killed in Bakhmut alone and you must also take into consideration that there was thousands of regular Russian troops, airborne forces and separatists killed in Bakhmut also. People erroneously think that it was only Wagner troops in Bakmut. That Wagner soldier who escaped to Norway at the beginning of the year states that there is numerous mass graves in Luhansk containing Wagner soldiers.

Nearly 50,000 Russian men had died in the war in Ukraine, according to the first independent statistical analysis of Russia’s war dead, released 10 July 2023. Two independent Russian media outlets, Mediazona and Meduza, working with a data scientist from Germany’s Tübingen University, used Russian government data to shed light on one of Moscow’s closest-held secrets — the true human cost of its invasion of Ukraine. To do so, they relied on a statistical concept popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic called excess mortality. Drawing on inheritance records and official mortality data, they estimated how many more men below the age of 50 died between February 2022 and May 2023 than normal.

That was roughly in line with a May assessment by the White House that more than 20,000 Russians had been killed in Ukraine since December, though lower than the US and UK intelligence assessments of overall Russian deaths. A leaked assessment from the US Defense Intelligence Agency put the number of Russians killed in action in the first year of the war at 35,000 to 43,000. In February 2023, the UK Ministry of Defence said approximately 40,000 to 60,000 Russians had likely been killed in the war.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine eliminated about 263,490 Russian invaders in Ukraine from February 24, 2022 to September 1, 2023, including 470 invaders in the past day alone. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said this 01 Septeember 2023, according to Ukrinform.

ChrisO_wiki reported 18 September 2023 "The Russian government has ordered 230,000 certificates for family members of deceased soldiers – a vast increase from the 23,716 it ordered in May 2023 and 5,777 in 2022. It likely illustrates the scale of the casualties it anticipates as the Ukraine war continues. Russia's Ministry of Labour and Social Protection (Mintrud) has listed an order for nearly a million certificates on the Russian government's procurement portal. As well as 230,000 for family members of the deceased, the order includes 757,305 combat veterans' certificates. ... The Ministry of Defence will receive 200,000 of the certificates for family members of the deceased, with another 30,000 going to the Ministry of Social Protection. The numbers are vastly greater than in the last two orders for certificates. In May 2023, Mintrud printed 95,907 certificates for combat veterans and 23,716 for family members of the deceased. An earlier order in the summer of 2022 resulted in the printing of 82,840 certificates for combat veterans and 5,777 certificates for family members of the deceased. So far, Mintrud has ordered a total of 936,052 certificates for combat veterans during the war."

The Institute for the Study of War reported 12 December 2023 US intelligence reportedly shared a declassified intelligence assessment with Congress on December 12. The US intelligence community reportedly assessed that Russian offensive operations in eastern Ukraine in fall 2023 and through the upcoming winter aim to weaken Western support for Ukraine instead of achieving any immediate operational objectives

US intelligence assessed that the war in Ukraine devastated the pre-war Russian military, although Russia had partially offset these losses and continued to prepare for a long war in Ukraine. The declassífied intelligence assessment reportedly stated that Russian forces lost 315,000 personnel out of the 360,000 personnel that participated in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian leadership has undertaken extensive force generation measures to meet manpower losses however, and Ukrainian intelligence reported in September 2023 that Russian forces had 420,000 personnel in occupied Ukraine. Partial mobilization began in September 2022 and ongoing Russian crypto-mobilization efforts very likely offset the Russian losses reported by US intelligence, although new Russian personnel likely had lower combat capabilities than those they replaced.

The Russian military command was also pursuing long-term restructuring and expansion eRorts to form strategic reserves and prepare for a potential future large-scale conventional war against NATO, although short-to-medium-term manpower requirements in Ukraine were likely undermining these efforts.

The Institute for the Study of War reported 12 December 2023 US intelligence reportedly shared a declassified intelligence assessment with Congress on December 12. The declassífied intelligence assessment reportedly stated that Russian forces lost 2,200 out of 3,500 tanks, and 4,400 out of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers that participated in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The assessment reportedly stated that Russian ground forces had lost over a quarter of their pre-invasion stockpiles of military equipment as of late November 2023, reducing the complexity and scale of Russian offensive operations in Ukraine.

Russia was gradually mobilizing its defense industrial base (DIB) to address materiel losses in Ukraine and sustain a prolonged war effort, although there are no indications that Russia has made significant progress in offsetting armored vehicle losses in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on December 11 during a speech at the US National Defense University that Russian President Vladimir Putin was shifting the Russian economy and society to a war-time footing.

The Russian army lost in the war against Ukraine 90% of the personnel it had before the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This was reported by 17 December 2023 Reuters with reference to a declassified American intelligence report. According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army has lost more than 340 thousand military personnel. And according to American intelligence information, more than 13 thousand Russian invaders were killed or wounded on the Avdiivka-Novopavlivka line alone.

An un-named senior U.S. defense official stated on 09 October 2024 that Russian forces have suffered over 600,000 casualties since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, ISW reported, citing several Western media outlets. This assessment coincides with Western intelligence estimates of Russian casualties that was disclosed in mid-September, putting the number of Russian KIAs as high as nearly 200,000 and wounded at around 400,000, according to WSJ. Such a high level of casualties would explain why Russian recruiters have had to accept older volunteers, causing the average age of those recruited in Moscow to climb from 40 in 2022 to 50 in 2024, according to Verstka. The Ukrainian military, which reportedly has had to contend with casualties of 480,000, according to its own estimates, has also had to continue recruiting older candidates, even after lowering the conscription age from 27 to 25. The average age of Ukrainian fighters was now over 43, according to estimates by government and military officials in a September 2024 report by WSJ.