The West has approached agreement on the number of Russian casualties in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The estimates are staggering.
According to Leo Docherty, U.K. Minister of State and Minister for the Armed Forces, “We estimate that approximately 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded, and tens of thousands more have already deserted since the start of the conflict. The number of personnel killed serving in Russian private military companies (PMCs) is not clear.”
In turn, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné recently said, “We estimate Russian military losses at 500,000, including 150,000 deaths.”
Ukraine’s estimate, which always seemed far in excess of those of its allies, is 475,300 as of May 6. It looks like the Ukrainians were right all along.
Since the ratio of wounded to killed is usually 3 to 1, it should be clear that, if the French are right, the Russian death rate is far higher than one would expect. That makes sense, as Russian commanders continue to send poorly trained recruits in human-wave attacks that reduce them to cannon fodder. There are also many reports of wounded soldiers being left to die in no man’s land.
Docherty’s comment is especially interesting as it excludes casualties incurred by the Wagner Group and other private military companies. Those were reputedly in the tens of thousands. It’s also unclear whether any of these estimates include separatists fighting in the militias of the Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics.” It’s therefore quite possible that total Russian deaths number 200,000 or higher, which comes out to 7,692 per month over the last 26 months. At that rate Russian deaths will total about 261,000 by the end of 2024.
“All of this for what?” Séjourné asked in an interview. “This can be summed up in two words: for nothing.”
Well, not quite. The war has enabled Putin to feed his ego and his comrades to grow richer. It’s revealed the depth of Russia’s economic, social, political, and cultural crisis, the duplicity of China and Türkiye, and the hypocrisy of much of the Global South, which claims to oppose imperialism as long as it’s not Russian.
The war strengthened NATO and accelerated Ukraine’s move westward. It’s also produced hundreds of thousands of widows and other grieving family members. But who cares? Certainly not Putin, the Kremlin, and the general staff.
Evidently, life is cheap in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, just as it was cheap in the Soviet and imperial Russian armies.
Indifference to life may be a function of the Russian military ethos or of Russian culture.
Either way, the self-slaughter will continue for as long as the criminal Putin regime remains in power.
About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl
Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”
