Quite a few public source intelligence outfits are keeping track of the estimated Russian losses since the invasion in 2022.
And they look pretty bad.
Thats 1% of thier male population, probably 2% of 18 - 50s, thats enormous.
How many of the deceased are actually Russian though? Aren’t they bringing in soldiers from impoverished countries to do their fighting for them?
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They are now, but originally there were a lot of poorly trained Russian conscripts on the front lines.
Its kind of gone like this (in terms of order):
Russian Army regulars
Russian Special Forces
Mercenaries
Russian Army conscripts
Prison conscripts
Far East mercenaries*
*these guys were basically tricked (but paid) into fighting.
And now that they have reached the end of the proverbial barrel at home its:
North Korean Army regulars
North Korean Army Special Forces
I was asking how the casualties break down.
They are pretty much all Russian (95%?)
NK did not get involved till a few months ago.
They were bringing in volunteers from poor African countries too, no? Like for a while now.
Wagner did a lot of things in the francophone Africa where you see countries breaking ties with France lately after military coups. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got recruits there. Nothing happened to the ones who did the coups which is not African Union or ECOWAS custom because the military regimes have Russian support.
Those countries’ post colonial relationship with France was based on terms for freedom from France that were really bad (like Haiti) so there is discontent about the relationship. One of the countries recently wiped out it’s debts since it cut relationships with France. There is a strong feeling there that they are not poor but are made poor.
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When I look for a source for the 724,000, I get “killed or wounded”.
One example: Ukraine War at 1,000 Days: 700,000 Dead or Wounded for Russia | The National Interest
They don’t really say much about the wounded. They just use the dead figures.
c700,000 is dead (agree there).
Previous esimate was 1M dead/wounded before Sept 2024 so could be 2M is on the higher end of estimates.
That was before Russia started sending human conscript waves into the meat grinder. They seem to have stopped that because they ran out of people.
https://www.wsj.com/world/one-million-are-now-dead-or-injured-in-the-russia-ukraine-war-b09d04e5
There was a Ukrainian estimate back in May (500,000 dead and wounded), which then increased to (1M dead and wounded in August) and they estimate 724,000 dead now so that seems credible to me.
They use three wounded to one killed as a ratio so thats probably how they get the 2.1M number.
The WSJ article says
The number of Ukrainians and Russians killed or wounded … has reached roughly one million
I think 724,000 Russians either killed or wounded is consistent with that. I don’t think 724,000 killed and another 2 million wounded fits the WSJ story.
They are using the 1:3 (killed:wounded) ratio which does look a tad high.
If there are 724,000 Russians who were “killed or wounded” and the ratio is 1:3, that means 181,000 killed and 543,000 wounded.
If the ratio is 1:2, that gives 241,000 killed and 483,000 wounded.
I am going from what I originally posted.
724k killed (x3 = 2.172M wounded)
Thats how they ended up with the numbers as they match up perfectly.
700k killed and wounded is on the lower end. British Intelligence had it at 500k killed and wounded last year, and the amount of dead/wounded has skyrocketed because of the type of compaign Russia has been waging.
In May, they were losing 1,000-1,500/day due to their near suicidal mass attacks. Thats 30-45k dead/month, with many more injured.
Somehow I see “killed or wounded” and you see “killed”.
For example:
Similarly, a statement delivered by UK representatives at the OSCE in May 2024—before the heaviest of the summer fighting—suggested that over 465,000 Russian personnel had been killed or wounded since the beginning of the conflict in February 2022.[23] The daily casualty rate (which includes those killed and wounded) had risen to 1,000 per day, or 30,000 per month.
I can believe another 250,000 killed or wounded since then (that would be 40,000/mo). But, notice the “or” (and also the “and”).
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/war-in-ukraine-update-october-2024/#heading-4
Trump is appointing 80 year old Keith Kellogg to be special envoy to Russia and Ukraine. Kellogg advocates conditioning US aid to Ukraine on Ukraine entering peace talks with Russia, and also advocates current battle lines as new borders.
So he is in favor of giving Kursk to Ukraine?
It seems like the Russian counter is regaining Kursk. Russia maybe focused on getting Ukraine out to make any possible negotiations easier for Russia. The conditions being proposed are interesting because they hurt Ukraine not Russia so Russia has no reason to enter talks early. I am not sure why they were made public anyway unless they are a threat to Ukraine.