Russia loses half of its troops in ‘deadly war’

US intelligence says deaths and injuries in Kremlin forces may be equivalent to size of British army

MORE than 75,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured in the war in Ukraine, according to new classified US intelligence, a loss equivalent to almost the entire British army.

If accurate, the figure would equate to half the 150,000 Russian troops reported to have been committed to the Ukrainian invasion, a staggering figure that points to an “exceptionally deadly war”, according to analysts. “We were briefed that over 75,000 Russians have either been killed or wounded, which is huge. You’ve got incredible amounts of investment in their land forces, over 80 per cent of their land forces are bogged down, and they’re tired,” Rep Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a Democrat who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and recently visited Ukraine, told CNN. “But they’re still the Russian military.”

The classified briefing, first reported by CNN, was given by the State Department, the Department of Defence, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

Russia has dismissed the figures as inflated, with Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, calling it a “hoax”. “In our time, even the most respectable publications do not shy away from disseminating all sorts of hoaxes: This is sadly happening too often,” he said. But losses on such a scale would help to explain why the Russian advance in the Donbas has been so grindingly slow, why so many troops are refusing to fight, and why Moscow is having to rely on fresh volunteers.

“You are talking about an exceptionally deadly war,” said Paul Poast, an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

He estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 Russian troops have been killed, which would be broadly in line with Western estimates of a 3:1 ratio of injuries to deaths.

Those killed may include “thousands” of lieutenants and captains and “hundreds” of colonels, a US official said last week.

If true, the new classified figures would make Ukraine Moscow’s worst conflict in terms of casualties since the Second World War – and the secondworst worldwide.

Only Vietnam injured and killed more soldiers from the occupying force – US casualties were more than 350,000 in that war.

The third worst was Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union suffered nearly 70,000 casualties, including around 15,000 killed.

“[The Russians] are exceeding the levels [of casualties] they had in both Afghanistan and Chechnya, which were exceedingly violent from their standpoint. This emphasises how intense the fighting has been.

“But they are facing a very different opponent. In Afghanistan, the Mujahideen did not receive American aid at the level now being provided to Ukraine until late in the war,” he added.

“In Ukraine, they are facing a professional army, which has received Western training since 2014 as well as weapons.”

Casualty estimates on both sides in Ukraine are highly speculative, however, US officials have warned. Russia’s last reported death toll, at the end of March, stood at just 1,351.

Russian journalists have verified the deaths of at least 4,760 soldiers by mid-july.

In Ukraine, a senior adviser to the Ukrainian president said in June that military casualties were now between 100 and 200 per day.

Earlier this month, Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian losses were now down to about 30 people per day.