Russian President Vladimir Putin's army has seen losses of nearly 290k during its invasion of Ukraine, experts have claimed – with nearly 890k injured on top of that figure.
Putin first ordered his troops to invade neighbouring Ukraine nearly one year and eight months ago. And having first planned to “capture” the country in just three days, it has now stretched out to just under two years, with the casualties piling up.
According to Russia's deputy labour minister Alexei Vovchenko, around 54% of those injured have lost limbs as a result of the war, which he called earlier this week a “vivid problem – it's a lot”. The figures vary widely depending on where you look, however, with the ones cited by the Daily Star coming from Ukraine's officials, while Russia has never officially confirmed its losses.
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And another figure of 190k losses or injuries in total is also cited by some, but none of it has been able to officially be confirmed while Kremlin officials keep schtum on the details. However, in July, it was revealed that the losses figure could actually be much small than what Ukraine claims, with anti-Kremlin Russian media outlet Meduza teaming with Mediazone and Tubingen University to calculate that Russia has actually seen between 40,000 and 55,000 soldiers killed in battle.
It also calculated that around 70,000 men have been injured so badly in battle that they can not return to the front line. The three organisations came to the figures by calculating reports from the Federal State Statistics Service, the National Probate Registry and published obituaries – but even those are controlled by Kremlin officials.
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A spokesman said: “In 15 months of fighting (from February 24, 2022, to late May 2023), three times more Russian soldiers died in Ukraine than Soviet troops over 10 years of war in Afghanistan. “Nine times more soldiers were killed in Ukraine than in the first Russian-Chechen War between 1994 and 1996. The numbers presented are remarkable not just because they signify the tens of thousands of men.
"Vladimir Putin has sent to die in a war of aggression but also because the authorities have laboured tirelessly to conceal the invasion’s true and growing costs to Russians themselves.” The last official data released by Russia came on September 21, 2022 when officials claimed that only 5,937 soldiers had been killed in action.
The numbers, however, could be even higher. The spokesman added: “Another monitoring obstacle is that Russia has released a large number of prison inmates to fight in Ukraine, whose deaths are far likelier to go unreported online and in the news media.”
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