Russia has lost half a million dead

Russia has suffered between 1.3 and 1.5 million total casualties in its war against Ukraine, with around half a million of those killed, a senior NATO official has said, as Moscow struggles to replace its losses.

On the sidelines of the NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting, the UK Defence Journal was told that Russia was showing signs of overstretch, with the official describing a “staggering half a million killed” on top of a far larger number of wounded, and noting that Russian casualties had been running at a relatively steady rate of between 30,000 and 35,000 a month.

Medical logistics remained difficult for Russia, the official said, and the steady drain was increasingly hard to make good, with voluntary recruitment weakening and Moscow “struggling to find new ways to fill its ranks”, particularly for the infantry assault groups that bear the brunt of the fighting.

To keep its formations manned, the official said, Russia was increasingly relying on convicts, on indebted citizens and on foreigners, a recruitment model the official assessed was only “barely sustainable”, with a few recent months in which the number of recruits had fallen below the casualty rate.

The foreign fighters were drawn mainly from Africa, the official said, putting the total at around 24,000 over the course of the war so far, while drawing a sharp distinction with the separate involvement of North Korean troops, describing the African recruits as individuals often “taken advantage of” after being signed up under false pretences with little transparency in their contracts.

The assessment formed part of a wider picture the official painted of mounting pressure on Russia, with a worsening military, economic and social situation, fuel shortages spreading from Crimea and growing discontent among both ordinary Russians and elites, even as Moscow continued to generate enough combat power, with support from China, Iran and North Korea, to keep its operations in Ukraine relatively stable.