In a recent intelligence update tweeted by the UK Ministry of Defence, it was estimated that the total number of Russian casualties since the onset of the war in Ukraine in February 2022 has likely reached a staggering 500,000.
This figure includes both killed and wounded personnel.
The data highlights that Russian losses have remained exceptionally high throughout 2024, with the average daily casualties in May exceeding 1,200 – the highest rate recorded since the conflict began.
The heightened casualty rate is attributed to Russia’s ongoing attritional offensive, which is being conducted across a broad front. According to the intelligence report, it is highly likely that most Russian forces are receiving only limited training, which hampers their ability to execute complex offensive operations. Consequently, Russia has resorted to small-scale but costly wave attacks aimed at weakening Ukrainian defences.
To sustain this strategy, Russia continues to recruit additional forces. However, the continuous need to replenish front-line personnel is almost certain to limit Russia’s ability to form higher capability units, the report suggests. This recruitment drive, while bolstering numbers, does little to enhance the overall effectiveness of Russian military operations, which remain constrained by the quality of training and the high casualty rates.
The Ministry of Defence’s tweet stated:
“The total number of Russian casualties (killed and wounded) since the start of the war in February 2022 has now likely reached 500,000. Russian losses have continued at a high level in 2024, and in May average Russian personnel casualties were over 1,200 per day – the highest reported since the start of the war.
The elevated casualty rate is highly likely a reflection of Russia’s ongoing attritional offensive which is being conducted across a wide front. It is highly likely that most Russian forces receive only limited training, and they are unable to carry out complex offensive operations. As a result, Russia employs small-scale but costly wave attacks in an effort to weaken Ukrainian defences.
Russia continues to recruit additional forces to sustain this approach. However, the need to continuously replenish front line personnel will almost certainly continue to limit Russia’s ability to generate higher capability units.”
Goodness knows the real state of Russian society in these times, every knock on the door you would be on edge incase its a military escort to send you to the front.
Wonder how the hundreds of thousands who escaped the country also now feel about the country, can they even contemplate returning anytime soon or would it be jail with with simple option of going to the front to avoid jail?
The Russian military and its performance is the biggest argument against increased defence spending. 1200 casualties a day attacking Europe’s poorest and least well armed countries. What hope would they have against NATO.
Sorry Jim, but that sounds like a Kremlin sponsored viewpoit. No country performing that badly will leave it there, you can bet your bottom defence dollar that they will be planning to fix it. And then there the nuclear weapons that they are always banging on about. Unthinkable? With conventional performance this bad? …….
I’m sure they are “planning” to fix it, I don’t doubt their plans just their ability.
They are a bunch of donkeys, no matter what they do they will always be a bunch of donkeys.
Got to disagree, if Russia is now “all in” for warfare and has, as most observers agree, switched its economy into a war footing then Russia is a danger to world peace and our own freedoms. Just because Russian society is happy to accept 500,000 casualties because of the whim of a mad psychopathic dictator, doesn’t mean we should be taking our eye of the ball and not being prepared to face up to Russia. Our government should have passed an emergency defence budget in February 2022. Instead and despite the growing threat from Russia and China, our government has continued the frankly insane defence cuts.
It is upto us to be ready for a war against Russia and to be so prepared that our contribution towards certain victory is assured. Instead we will likely blunder into the next war as Ethelred the Unready and it is our military that will suffer the casualties because of the craven folly of defence cuts.
When the war with Ukraine ends the Russian economy is in for a massive shock as it comes off a war footing.
It’ll either be really hard times or…. continue the war footing.
I suspect very much they will maintain it on a war footing…look at 1930s Germany..essentially it moved to a wartime economy in around 1933 and just kept on going until the allies essentially flattened the country…and for most of its war time economy it’s GDP had strong growth ( 55% between 33 and 37) the problem is it’s not sustainable and at some point you have to conquer something worth having or your economy will collapse in a hole..but if we say from previous experience they have a good decade of running a hot wartime economic model…that’s a big problem in the 30s and into the early 30s…as the mad bugger will need to find someone else to invade.( that’s assuming Russia grinds down Ukraine).
The wheels are already falling off their wartime economy just like the Nazis in 1942.
Germany atleast had the advantage of winning in the early war bringing in new sources of labour and resources.
Russia has gained zero and lost much in Ukraine.
Russia has gained majority control of the world’s grain market. If it is able to hold the land it has taken it will control the middle European trade route, and the northern sea route.
Jonathan, I think Beevor debunked the NAZI war economy myth although, William Shirer did it much earlier in the mid 80s.
Russia with accomplices like India and China refining their oil and supplying hard currency could continue for some some.
Latvian Lessons Learnt, redux. Kill Russians, kill more Russians and then keep killing Russians.
They don’t learn; they do die and that is what they understand, when every last one of them is dead.
Yes and all to be compounded by demographic collapse. The UK will have more people than Russia before the end of this century.
l would think that having defence cuts is just as insane as Putin. I think the main reason is that the government don’t have a clue, and that’s pretty evident over the last 14 years of circus clown management. Everything is always on the back foot, god only knows if it kicks off with Russia, l guess it’s kiss your arse goodbye.
This from the poster who likes to tell everyone else they are talking rubbish!
Precisely. Nerves on edge in a number of western arms manufacturers boardrooms. It doesn’t mean – nor do you imply – the west should relax; simply maintain a steadiness of purpose, flexibility and agility. Even if Russia reforms and re-equips, this thrashing will give them pause for thought for decades..
Russia does not care about high casualties.
The Kremlins’ whole strategy is to keep the waves of attacks going, regardless of the cost of men and equipment. The strategy is to wear the Ukrainians down or exhaust their ammunition and then break through.
It is estimated Russia can sustain this attritional loss rate for another 2 – 3 years. That means NATO countries will need to keep up the supply of weapons and ammo for the same period, and Ukraine will have to keep up in its efforts to recruit new fighters.
Yes I agree, however my point was related to Russia trying to invade NATO. It would be able to simply pump men and artillery into a fight, they rapist army would simply be whipped out. Russia has zero chance against NATO. As I said it can’t even advance 40KM into Europes poorest and least well armed country.
It’s not getting to Berlin much less London or Paris.
Same view expressed by Radakin speaking at the D-Day celebrations.
Yes, but how many casualties/losses would NATO accept, before it becomes a political issue?
This is the difference between autocratic Russia and Western democracies.
So could we maintain a long war of attrition these days without the general public railing against it?
The manpower is going to be where Ukraine will struggle if this does drag on for another 2-3 years, they started with a much smaller population pool than Russia. They do have a much better motivation to fight though and i’m sure they’ll keep bleeding the Russians as long as the West keeps getting kit into the country.
The RF to AFU kill ratio is reported between 5:1 at best and 2:1 when mistakes are made, allegedly however I have no independent evidence of that reporting…
Big and incompetent vs small and determined seems likely to support those rates. Not forgetting that significant Ukrainian casualties are civilian, not counted on front line.
Ukrainian civilian casualties are miniscule compared to Military losses – where are you getting your information from ?.
Putin’s hold on Russia and Russian society must be absolute if the country is happy to accept 500,000 casualties and still not prepared to rise up against him. He is a dictator plain and simple as well as being a psychopathic madman. guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and wanted by the international criminal court in the Hague.
Its high time Russia woke up to Putin and his henchmen and rose up against them.
As long as the Russians can keep sending colonial troops from places in Siberia and Chechnia to the front the Russian Moskovites won’t care. The best chance to rise up against Putin came from Pierogi the Bald and his march on Moscow and you saw how that went. Now with the shake up nobody can even scream at Shoigu demanding ammunition.
100%
How long until russia starts fielding it’s ‘Africa corp’ in Ukraine?
They started doing that in 2022.
He’s working very hard at indoctrination of his population and and indoctrinated population will take almost any level of pain…look at the third Reich and communist Russia…they ended up killing 10s millions of each other’s population and neither side was surrendering.
Most Russians are donkeys, donkeys don’t rise up,
Most Russians didn’t blame the Tsar in 1917 for their ills, few actually rose up, it was a military coup by the guards and others.
If Putin controls the Army there will never be an uprising.
Interesting reference to history.
Which ‘Soviet’ nation were the preferred Guards for the Soviet elite.
£10 to Help for Heroes if you guess correct.
Cossacks, Cossacks!
I win!
I knew revising for GCSE History was worth it
Nope
Longshot here, German?
Nope. Kind of close though in aryan looks.
There was a short film online showing a Russian night club. They believe the ratio of Women to Men is about 100 to 1. All the young men have been conscripted or have escaped to other countries.
Not a bad time to be a young man in that nightclub then.
Well, going off my experience of Rīga, with 56% Russian population, not a bad time to be any man in that night club 😉
Everything this article says should just be swap around for the Ukranian military which has run out of soldiers and the new recruits are sent to the front with poor training. I just visited Russia came back 6 days ago they have plenty of young man working in restaurant taxis banks they don’t have a general mobilisation or forced enlisting like in Ukraine.The human wave is the only alternative for the Ukranians which they are outnumber in artillery fire by 10 to 1 to try to stop the Russian advance and this is what the Ukrainian high rank are complaining about it. To finish on both sides they have mercenaries.
Problably the casualties are very high for Russia but the population since the beginning of the war in 2022 has grown by 1 million to 144. As we all know the Ukranian population has significantly dropped by the millions.
We should give Ukraine aerial refueling capability for the F-16 in additions to the AWACS for effective use of the jets.
Providing AAR, whilst a good idea on it’s own would lead to another issue with escalation and confliction, best avoided I think.
Escalation is irrelevant at best and just Muscovite propaganda at worst. Poo tin and his gang have been escalating since day one. The only valid problems I can see are the training and support for a completely new technology/technique, wholly outside Ukraines current experience.
How is escalation irrelevant ?.
Use of CCP, Iranian and NK weapons is a huge escalation so conventional weapons from Ukrainian supporters are completely justified.
Crimlin talking points are just propaganda.
The only good orc is fertilising an Ukrainian field..
The use of Weapons supplied by 3rd parties obviously applies to both sides, but the point is NK, China and Iran don’t supply the manpower to operate them. If Ukraine wanted an AAR Capability it would have to be provided by and operated by NATO Personnel, which begs the question where and how they would implement it. It would be a Can of Worms too far in my book.
Ukraine has shown that AFU are not only capable with legacy equipment, but fast learners and innovators finding unexpected ways to make effective use of what they have or build.
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Their neighbouring countries have offered to build on what Patriot and SAMP/T (sp?) systems within UA can do by operating their systems in their own territory but in the overlapping airspace that covers UA. Whilst that offer limits the area covered, it allows UA to take their own systems further east, knowing that western UA is already covered.
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That suits the defence focused support of some countries that don’t want to supply offensive systems nor operate in RF territory. A fairly pointless restriction given that UA have shown that they can build long range offensive drones, but since all support is needed, acceptable as a piece of the jigsaw..
It’s like accepting the terms of a thief in the middle of your house in the middle of the night. Subdued a criminal says “use a spoon to punish me and NOT- lethal force!” Escalation is appeasement!
Do you mean the pair of Saab 340 Erieyes that are being sent to Ukraine?