CNN
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A new study, a horrifying measure of Russian time costs, shows that nearly a million Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in a full-scale Ukrainian invasion. President Vladimir Putin has not been provoked Three years of attack on his neighbor.
Russia is likely to reach the 1 million casualty mark this summer, the study said on Tuesday by Washington think tank Centre for Strategic International Studies (CSIS)., DC. The “stunning” milestone was said to be “a sign of Putin’s blatant neglect of his explicit soldiers.”
Research shows that of an estimated 950,000 Russian casualties so far, as many as 250,000 have died. “Since World War II, the Soviet and Russian wars have not approached Ukraine in terms of fatality,” he said. It has 60,000 to 100,000 deaths, adding that Ukraine is retaining nearly 400,000 casualties.
Kyiv does not disclose its own combat losses in detail, and Moscow is believed to be a major underestimating its own casualties, but CSIS figures are in line with the UK and US intelligence report ratings.
In March, the UK Ministry of Defense estimated that Russia had suffered roughly 900,000 casualties since 2022. For months, Russia determined that it lost about 1,000 soldiers every day, whether killed or injured. Based on that trend, Russia is expected to surpass the 1 millionth threshold in the coming weeks.
Refuting the claims from some Western lawmakers that Russia holds “all cards” in the war in Ukraine, CSIS research used Russian casualties figures. They also estimated losses of heavy machinery and slower territorial gains as evidence that Moscow’s troops were relatively inadequate in the combat field.
After Ukraine repelled Russia’s first “Blitzkrieg” attack in 2022, the war was then melted. While digging in trench and mines, Kyiv said that Moscow poured more and more troops into what has become known as “meat crushing” attacks, throwing soldiers into the campaign for only a small territorial gain.
According to the survey, in the northeastern Kharkiv region, Russian forces only advance by an average of 50 meters per day. It is slower than the advances of Britain and France in the Battle of the Somme in the Trench of World War I.
The slow rate of advancement means that Russia has only been seized since January 2024, and the authors call this a “small” amount. Russia currently accounts for around 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea Peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
However, the decline in Russian territorial profits has not led to a change in strategy. To maintain an astounding rate of Russian casualties, the Kremlin has hired prisoners from prisons and welcomed more than 10,000 troops from its allied North Korea, but the elite children of Moscow and St. Petersburg remain largely out of control.
Instead, Moscow is adopted in the country’s Far North and Far East, where men are seduced by a life-changing wage package among the poor communities in these areas. “President Putin is likely to believe that these types of soldiers are more exhausting and unlikely to undermine his domestic support base,” the study said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine, a democracy with a population of less than a quarter of the size of Russia, faces several pushbacks in attempts to mobilize more troops. However, as the war is now in its fourth year, the author warned that the “blood cost” of the prolonged campaign is a potential vulnerability for Putin.
Russia has had an “initiative” in the conflict since early 2024, but the author stated that the intermittent nature of the war “has little opportunity for a decisive breakthrough.”
Instead, the main hope for Russia’s victory is “for the United States to cut off aid to Ukraine” – as President Donald Trump did earlier this year, and as threatened by officials in his administration, “to leave the conflict.”
