Ukraine-Russian Crisis

Ukraine War: Russian Casualties In Ukraine Surpasses 75,000 — U.S. Intelligence

Published

2 years ago

Jul 28, 2022.

Benard Joseph

Russian Casualties In Ukraine Surpasses 75,000 — U.S. Intelligence.
U.S Representative, Elissa Slotkin on Wednesday said over 75,000 Russian soldiers have been either killed or wounded since Russia began its invasion on February 24…

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EKO HOT BLOG reports that roughly half of the Russian troops initially sent to invade Ukraine are estimated to have been killed or wounded, indicating that the ongoing conflict has enacted a sizable toll on Russia.

US Representative, Elissa Slotkin on Wednesday told CNN that over 75,000 Russian soldiers have been either killed or wounded since Russia began its invasion on February 24.

Slotkin made the remarks after attending a classified briefing on the war in Ukraine with Biden administration officials who described the Russian military as drained.

Casualty estimates for militaries on both sides are highly speculative, U.S. officials have said. They often give ranges rather than specific numbers, though just last week, the C.I.A. director estimated that 60,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or injured. And some estimates have gone as high as 80,000 casualties.

If the Biden administration’s current estimate is accurate, it represents a staggering toll. Estimates of the number of Russian forces in Ukraine ranged as high as 150,000 in the spring, meaning roughly half could be out of action.

Pentagon officials have said that losing just 10 percent of a military force, including both those killed and injured, renders a single unit unable to carry out combat-related tasks. Such losses also affect the morale and cohesion of a military unit.

Throughout the war, Ukraine and Russia have shielded their casualty numbers, keeping one another, and the rest of the world, guessing about the depth of their losses. Both sides have an interest in underreporting battlefield losses: Russia to preserve its domestic narrative of success, and Ukraine, to maintain morale.

Troop deaths and injuries have been mounting, given that fierce fighting has endured for months, but the Biden administration’s estimate suggests just how high casualties may have gone on Russia’s side.

More recently, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Ukrainian military casualties were now between 100 and 200 per day.

Just weeks into the war, American officials offered what they said was a conservative estimate of more than 7,000 Russian war deaths so far — more than the number of American troops killed over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Russia followed with a far smaller count, saying on March 25 that 1,351 of its troops had been killed.

And President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said the same month that an estimated 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed.

In May, Ukraine claimed that 30,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the invasion began in February, a number impossible to independently verify. In April, a British intelligence assessment put the estimated Russian losses at half that number.

FURTHER READING:

Mr. Zelensky made a new claim in his nightly address on Tuesday, saying that almost 40,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of the war, with tens of thousands more injured. That claim comports, in broad terms, with the U.S. estimate of about 75,000 Russian total casualties.

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