Hundreds of Russian soldiers are falling daily in Ukraine, according to Kiev estimates, which also focus on the destruction wreaked on Russian artillery and defenses as they attempt to breach Ukrainian troops.
The total number of casualties in the Russian troops – between dead and wounded – stands at over 250,000 since the start of the large-scale Russian invasion, in February 2022, according to calculations by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army, updated on Monday.
According to the latest report from the General Staff, some 540 Russian soldiers were killed in the last 24 hours of fighting alone. Ukrainian military sources say that these figures are “provisional” and pending verification, since it is difficult to obtain exact numbers in the heat of battle.
Added to these difficulties is the lack of transparency. Errors can occur in both directions, according to what Andriy Babichev, a drone operator for the Ukrainian army, explained to EFE from Bakhmut.
Accessing the bodies of fallen enemies is complex. Together with the information coming from the soldiers themselves, the estimates are made based on the information available in the drone footage and taking into account the number of troops calculated inside the destroyed military vehicles.
Russia, like Ukraine, do not release data on the number of their own fallen soldiers. The last time its Defense Ministry made the information public was on September 21, 2022, when it reported the deaths of 5,937 Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
The figure did not include fighters from the Wagner mercenary group or forces from Russian-controlled areas in Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions, according to kyiv.
One of Wagner’s commanders, known as ‘Marx’, stated on July 19 through the “Razgruzka Wagnera” Telegram channel that the group’s casualties in Ukraine as of May 20 were 79,000 combatants, among the nearly 22,000 killed and 40,000 wounded.
A recent study by two Russian opposition outlets, Mediazona and Meduza, put the number of Russian soldiers dead in Ukraine as of May 27 at 47,000 and another 78,000 seriously wounded.
Such data cannot be verified, but their dynamics correspond to the major battles and Ukrainian advances on the front. The peaks were reached during the liberation of areas in the Kharkov region last September and in Kherson last November.
March became the deadliest month for Russian troops storming Bakhmut, with more than 24,000 killed in combat, according to Ukrainian army estimates.
During the ongoing counter-offensive, Russia suffered the highest number of casualties in one day, 1,010, on June 8, when it occurred one of the first days of Ukraine’s attempts to break through the dense defense lines in the south and near Bakhmut.
Since the end of June, Russia’s daily casualties have been below 700 soldiers a day. Instead, the estimated losses of artillery and anti-aircraft defense have been multiplied several times.
Between June and July, 688 and 677 howitzers and other artillery pieces were destroyed, compared to 238 in April. 56 and 73 air defense pieces were destroyed in June and July, compared to 16 in April.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project