June is shaping up to be a deadly month for Russia’s armed forces. It began with a daring Ukrainian drone strike on military airfields from Siberia in the east to Murmansk in the north, which Ukraine claims destroyed 41 aircraft, or about a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. But another, far more significant toll looms. Before the month is out, Russia will likely suffer its millionth casualty since the start of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, at a current rate of about 1.000 soldiers killed or wounded per day.
Russia’s staggering losses, far exceeding anything it has suffered in wars since World War II, are testament to Ukraine’s dogged defense against a vastly superior enemy. Yet Russia’s ability to sustain those losses and continue to recruit men to launch bloody attacks should raise serious questions for NATO’s European members: How can democracies that value individual life deter an adversary that cares so little about the lives of its soldiers that it is willing to sacrifice them, year after year, in a devastating war of attrition?
Russian attacks with massive manpower are largely “useless and amount to endless torture,” says Sir Lawrence Friedman, a leading British strategist. “But there is no sign of exhaustion – they simply keep going.”
The grim casualty statistics are based on data collected by the Ukrainian General Staff, which leaves room for doubt. However, the figure is not far from estimates by Western intelligence services.
It also roughly matches estimates by independent Russian media outlets like Meduza and Mediazone, which are trying to count the bodies. At this time last year, Meduza estimated that between 106.000 and 140.000 Russian soldiers had died. Much of their analysis is based on data from probate proceedings, obituaries on social media, and other sources.
An estimate of excess mortality among Russian men, based on probate records, put the figure at 165.000 by the end of 2024, with 90.000 recorded in the previous six months. Given the intensity of Russian military operations for much of last year, it is not difficult to arrive at an estimate that around 250.000 men have died so far. The ratio of seriously wounded to dead is thought to be around four to one, reflecting both the severity of the injuries in Ukraine and the low priority Russia places on medical evacuation and rapid, life-saving hospital care on the ground.
Another reason that casualty figures are considered relatively reliable is that, to an unusually high extent, they are related to soldiers killed in combat. In most wars, a high percentage of deaths, even among combatants, are due to disease, starvation, accidents, and the deliberate persecution of people in occupied territories - which are by their nature difficult to determine with statistical precision.
A good example of this is the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2003. It is to date the deadliest conflict of the 21st century, believed to have claimed 5,4 million lives, most of them from disease and starvation. In World War II, of the nearly 27 million Soviet citizens who died, about 6,3 million died in combat or from wounds sustained.
Ukraine does not release detailed figures on its military losses. However, in December last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that 43.000 people had been killed and 370.000 wounded since the beginning of the invasion. These figures are likely to be underestimates. However, the relatively low number of Ukrainian casualties compared to the enemy reflects a number of different factors.
Apart from a failed counter-offensive two years ago, Ukraine has been fighting a largely defensive war. Advances in drone technology have so far favored defense over offense. Explosive-laden racing drones, known as First Person View (FPV), which are aimed directly at tanks or soldiers, play a role similar to that of machine guns in World War I. The innovation made infantry attacks so costly that neither side could break the stalemate of trench warfare until new tactics were developed and tanks invented. FPV drones also made tanks vulnerable. Russia has lost nearly 11.000 tanks and nearly 23.000 armored infantry fighting vehicles since the start of the war. Today, it relies mostly on infantry attacks by small groups of men — sometimes on foot, sometimes on motorcycles.
It is astonishing how Russia manages to absorb such huge losses. It needs to recruit between 30.000 and 40.000 new soldiers every month to fill its ranks. For comparison, Russian losses to date are comparable to Britain's total losses in World War II.
Another reason why Russian losses are significantly higher than Ukrainian ones is that Ukraine is a democracy and has about four times less population to mobilize. Therefore, it must show that it cares about the well-being of its soldiers. Its ratio of wounded to killed is estimated to be about eight to one. Whenever the Ukrainian army has shown itself indifferent to its soldiers, the mobilization problems have worsened.
Yet it is astonishing how Russia still manages to absorb such enormous losses (it needs to recruit between 30.000 and 40.000 new soldiers every month to fill its ranks). By comparison, Russian losses to date are comparable to Britain’s total losses in World War II. They also come close to the number of American casualties in the same conflict, when the American population was roughly the same size as Russia’s today. The death toll in Ukraine is probably more than four times higher than the American losses during eight years of direct involvement in the Vietnam War – losses that sparked mass protests at the time. Russia’s losses are also about ten times higher than the total number of casualties suffered by the Soviet Union during the war in Afghanistan.
As Ukraine fights a war for national survival, Russian President Vladimir Putin has a choice. Yet he appears to face little internal pressure to back down. Having lost most of the largely professional army he set out to conquer Ukraine more than three years ago, the Kremlin has devised an almost entirely new way to rebuild front-line personnel without risking social stability. The approach combines the ideological militarization of society—convincing most Russians to fight against imperialist NATO and that there is glory in death—with increasingly generous contracts for those willing to sign up.
“Putin believes that the war in Afghanistan was one of the main reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed,” says Alexander Goltz of the Stockholm Center for East European Studies. “He has engineered a real revolution in Russian military thinking. I call it ‘market mobilization,’ while others have called it ‘deathonomics.’”
The amounts paid to soldiers - mostly from poorer provincial towns, in their thirties and forties - are truly life-changing for many families. As of the end of last year, according to Elena Racheva, a former Russian journalist who now works as a researcher at Oxford University, the one-time bonus for enlisting in the army was 1,19 million rubles (about $15.000), while the annual salary of a contract soldier ranged between 3,5 and 5,2 million rubles - up to five times the average salary. If a contract soldier dies, his family receives between 11 and 19 million rubles.
According to a poll conducted last October by the Levada Center, an independent public opinion polling organization, 40% of Russians would support a family member or close friend signing up for military service. Journalist Olesya Gerasimenko reported from a Moscow recruitment center last summer and noted that many middle-aged fathers came to sign the contract accompanied by their wives and children, determined to improve their family’s financial situation.
Mr. Golc says the effects can be seen across small towns in Russia, where recruitment is fastest. New houses are being built, more expensive cars are appearing on the streets, and nail salons and gyms are opening.
For now, Racheva believes, Russian society is accepting this system as an alternative to full mobilization. As many as 88% of respondents support the idea that contract soldiers receive money and benefits because they go to war “in our place.” For the families of the dead and wounded, the huge cash payments “alleviate... their pain, their sense of injustice... and allow society to avoid moral responsibility for the victims and injuries they suffered,” Racheva wrote. In other words, the contract does not exist only between the soldier and the state. The question that no one can answer is - how long will the contract last.
Translation: NB
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