British Ministry of Defense analysis… Estimated 40,000 to 60,000 deaths
Casualties soar after recent Great Eastern Offensive
Analysis of “90% of mercenary deaths are prisoners”
A mercenary from the Wagner Group, a private mercenary company, stands in front of a destroyed building in the village of Soledar, Donetsk Region, Ukraine, occupied by Russian forces, on March 29 (local time). TASS Yonhap News
A Western intelligence agency has analyzed that up to 200,000 Russian soldiers were killed or injured on the battlefield in the year following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
According to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DI) under the British Ministry of Defense, the number of Russian casualties ranged from 175,000 to 200,000, including the Russian regular army and the Wagner Group, a private military company (PMC), since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 last year. announced on the 17th (local time). Of these, the number of dead is estimated to be between 40,000 and 60,000.
This is similar to estimates for the US and other European countries. The Pentagon announced on the 4th to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that the number of casualties in the Russian army over the past year has reached 180,000, and Norway has also put out the same figure.
Western intelligence agencies believe that the number of casualties has risen noticeably since Russia issued an order to mobilize 300,000 people in September of last year. The majority of conscripts were sent to the front line without sufficient training and became ‘cancellation’. As Russia is conducting offensive operations in the east ahead of the first year of the war, there are also observations that the death toll will increase sharply in the coming weeks.
The WSJ reported, citing military experts, that the Russian army is using tactics reminiscent of the former Soviet Union’s “Red Army” during World War II. It is said that infantry is being put into the front line without air support or artillery in the rear. Ukrainian forces claimed they had “cleared” 800 Russian soldiers in one day on the 17th, claiming that their troops had killed 141,260 Russian soldiers since the invasion began.
Britain’s Defense Intelligence Agency said, “By modern standards, the ratio of deaths to total casualties in the Russian army is very high.”
The Defense Intelligence Agency said that nearly half of the Wagner Group’s mercenaries concentrated in eastern Ukraine were killed or wounded. The Wagner Group, founded by Evgeny Prigozin, also known as “Putin’s chef” as a restaurant entrepreneur, recruited tens of thousands of prisoners from prisons across Russia and put them into battle when the Russian government issued a mobilization order. He put up a condition that he would be pardoned if he served on the battlefield for six months. There was also an analysis that most of the deaths of Wagner’s group were mercenaries from these prisoners.
John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council (NSC), said at a briefing that day, “The Wagner Group treats former convict recruits as expendable items. They are literally throwing them through a ‘meat grinder.'” He said, “Since mid-December of last year, the number of casualties of the Wagner Group has reached 30,000 and the death toll is estimated to be 9,000.”
Ukraine does not publish casualty figures for its forces, but Western estimates suggest that close to 100,000 casualties have also occurred in Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian Army Commander-in-Chief Valery Zalzrunyi said in August that about 9,000 of his troops had been killed.
Russia has not disclosed the number of casualties since it announced in September of last year that 5,937 people had been killed by its troops. Russia classifies the number of casualties as a state secret and prohibits the press or organizations from disclosing lists or numbers of casualties that have not been officially announced by the government.