An American parliamentary source revealed the figures for the human and material losses suffered by Russia since the start of the war.
American intelligence services estimate the number of Russian soldiers injured or killed at 315,000 since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, an American parliamentary source told AFP on Tuesday.
This estimate appears in a declassified document transmitted to Congress on the occasion of the visit to Washington by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, intended to convince American parliamentarians to approve new military aid to kyiv. According to the same document, which several American media reported, Russia lost 2,200 armored vehicles out of the 3,500 it possessed before the start of the war on February 24, 2022.
Nearly 400,000 people recruited by the Russian army
The current Russian push into southern and eastern Ukraine since October has cost Moscow some 13,000 soldiers dead or wounded and more than 220 vehicles lost on the front line, US intelligence had previously indicated. Russia has never indicated how many men it had engaged in Ukraine since February 2022, nor really communicated on its losses, ensuring that Western estimates on this subject were largely exaggerated.
Around 385,000 people have enlisted in the Russian army since January 1, 2023, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, number two on the Russian Security Council, said on October 25. After mobilizing some 300,000 reservists from September 2022, the Russian authorities, despite significant losses in Ukraine, avoided decreeing a new mobilization.
Instead, the Russian army has been carrying out a vast voluntary recruitment campaign since the spring of 2023, with a lot of advertising in the streets and on the Internet, promising particularly attractive salaries and social and banking benefits to future soldiers. In July 2022, American and British intelligence agencies indicated that they estimated at around 15,000 the number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, five months earlier.