2024-04-18 01:55:57
- Author, Olga Ivshina, Becky Dale y Kirstie Brewer
- Role, BBC Russian Service
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1 hour
The number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine exceeds 50,000, as confirmed by the BBC.
In the second year of fighting on the front, as Moscow pushed its call “meat grinder” strategywe discovered that the number of deaths exceeded those registered in the first 12 months by 25%.
The BBC Russian service, the independent media group Mediazona and volunteers counted the casualties since February 2022.
New headstones in cemeteries helped provide the names of many soldiers.
Our teams also reviewed data from official reports, newspapers and social media.
These indicate that more than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year combat, reflecting how territorial gains have come at an enormous human cost.
The term “meat grinder” has been used to describe the way Moscow sends waves of soldiers to the front lines to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and mark their locations for Russian artillery.
The total number of deaths, more than 50,000is eight times greater than the only official public data on death toll figures recognized by Russia in September 2022.
The actual number of Russian casualties is likely to be much higher.
Our analysis does not include militia deaths in Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine. If they were added, the number of deaths on the Russian side would be even higher.
Ukraine, meanwhile, rarely comments on the magnitude of its battlefield deaths. In February, the president Volodymyr Zelensky said that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had diedbut estimates, based on US intelligence, suggest greater losses.
The “meat grinder”
The latest list of dead soldiers compiled by the BBC and Mediazona reveals the high human cost of Russia’s change of tactics on the front.
The following graph shows how the Russian Army suffered a sharp increase in the number of deaths in January 2023when a large-scale offensive began in the Ukrainian Donetsk region.
As the Russians fought for the city of Vuhledar, they used “inefficient frontal attacks in the form of human waves”according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
“The difficult terrain, lack of firepower and inability to surprise Ukrainian forces,” he explained, translated into low gains and high losses in combat.
Another significant increase in casualties on the chart is observed in spring 2023 during the battle for Bakhmutwhen the mercenary group Wagner helped Russia capture the city.
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin estimated his group’s losses at that time at 22,000.
The Russian capture of the city of Avdiivkain eastern Ukraine, last fall also led to a spike in military deaths.
In response to this BBC investigation, Moscow alleged on Wednesday that there are state secrets laws that prohibit publishing the death toll in Moscow’s war in Ukraine, adding that this information “is provided only by the Ministry of Defense.”
“This is due to the law on state secrets and the special regime for the dissemination of information under the conditions of a special military operation, which are still in force,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.
counting tombstones
Volunteers working with the BBC and Mediazona told new military graves in 70 cemeteries from all over Russia since the war began.
The necropolises have been considerably expanded, as shown by aerial images.
For example, images of the Bogorodskoye cemetery in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, reveal the existence of a completely new section.
Photographs and videos taken on the ground suggest that most of the new graves belong to soldiers and officers killed in Ukraine.
According to BBC estimates, at least two out of every five dead Russian fighters had no connection with the Army Before the war.
When the invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Russia turned to its professional troops to carry out complex military operations, explains Samuel Cranny-Evans of the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), a London-based think tank.
The Defense analyst explains that many of those experienced soldiers are probably dead or wounded and have been replaced by people with little military training or experience, such as volunteers, civilians and prisoners.
New recruits can’t operate the same as professional soldiers, Cranny-Evans points out.
“This means they have to do much simpler things from a tactical point of view, like assaults on Ukrainian positions with artillery support,” he says.
Wagner and the Ministry of Defense
Soldiers recruited into prisons are crucial to the success of the “meat grinder” and our analysis suggests they are now being killed on the front lines at a faster rate.
Moscow allowed former Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to begin prison recruitment in June 2022.
Inmates-turned-combatants fought as part of this private army on behalf of the Russian government.
Wagner had a fearsome reputation for his relentless fighting tactics and brutal internal discipline; soldiers could be executed on the spot for retreating without orders.
The group continued recruiting prisoners until February 2023, when its relationship with Moscow began to deteriorate. Since then, the Russian Defense Ministry has continued the same policy.
Prigozhin organized a failed mutiny against the Russian armed forces in June last year and attempted to advance on Moscow. He died in August in a plane crash.
For our analysis we investigate the names of 9,000 Russian prisoners that we know were killed at the front.
Of these, in more than 1,000 cases we confirmed the start dates of their military contracts and when they died.
We discover that, under Wagner, former inmates They survived an average of three months in the war.
However, as the graph above suggests, those who were later recruited by the Ministry of Defense They only lived an average of two months.
The Ministry has created military units commonly known as “Storm-Z” squads (storm), composed almost entirely of convicts.
Like Wagner’s prisoner units, these detachments are often treated as an expendable force to throw into battle.
These fighters”They are just meat“a regular soldier who had fought alongside members of Storm-Z told Reuters last year.
The squads played a decisive role in the months-long battle to capture Avdiivka.
The city fell to Russia eight weeks ago and was Putin’s biggest strategic and symbolic battlefield victory since Bakhmut.
Prisoners sent directly to the front
Under Wagner, new combatants released from prison received fifteen days of military training before heading to the battlefield.
However, we discovered that some Ministry of Defense recruits were killed at the front during the first two weeks of their contracts.
Relatives of recruited convicts who died (and some still alive) assured the BBC that the Ministry of Defense’s military training for these new soldiers is insufficient.
A widow told us that her husband had signed his contract in prison on April 8 of last year and Three days later he was fighting on the front.
“He was sure that he would be given weeks of training and that there would be nothing to fear at least until the end of April.”
He discovered that He had been murdered on April 21.
Caption, Military graves at the Bakinskaya cemetery in southern Russia.
Another mother confesses that she learned that her husband had been taken from prison to the battlefield when she tried to contact him to inform him of the death of her son, who had also been fighting.
The woman, whom we call Alfiya, assured that her son Vadim, 25, father of twins, had never held a weapon before being mobilized.
She explained that she could not inform her husband Alexander about their son’s death because they had “taken him” to fightsomething he discovered through a phone call from another inmate.
Alexander grew up in Ukraine, had family there – Alfiya stated – and knew that it was a “lie” that Russia had invaded Ukraine to fight fascism.
When Army recruiters first came to the prison, “it sent them to hell,” he said.
About seven months after her son’s death, Alfiya received the news that Alexander had also been murdered.
“Prepare to die”
When they worked for Wagner, inmates were usually hired for six months. If they survived, they would eventually be freed.
But since last September, under the Ministry of Defense, enlisted prisoners They must fight until they die or until the war ends.
The BBC has heard recent stories of prisoners asking their relatives to help them buy suitable uniforms and boots.
There have also been reports of inmates sent to fight without adequate equipment, weapons, or medical supplies.
“Many soldiers had rifles that were not suitable for combat,” wrote Russian blogger and war supporter Vladimir Grubnik, on his Telegram channel.
“It is a mystery what an infantryman must do on the front without a first aid kit or a shovel to dig in a trench and with a broken rifle!” he noted.
Image source, Reuters
Caption, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s late leader.
Grubnik – who is based in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine – says that when commanders discovered that some weapons were “completely broken” they claimed that It was “impossible” to replace them.
“The rifle was already assigned to the person and the harsh military bureaucracy couldn’t do anything about it.”
Former inmates have also commented on the high price their comrades pay.
“If they recruit you now, prepare to die, friend“Sergei says in an online forum for Storm-Z squadron fighters and their families, where they share information.
He claims to be an ex-convict who has been fighting in a platoon unit since October.
Another forum member claims he joined a 100-soldier Storm-Z squad five months ago and now He is one of the 38 still alive.
“Each combat mission is like being born again,” he says.
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