Russia is pushing towards three-quarters of a million casualties in its war against Ukraine, Kyiv claims, with daily casualties allegedly creeping towards 2,000 every 24 hours.
Official figures published by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have claimed Russia experienced the deadliest day of it war yet on Monday, with 1,950 killed or wounded. The figure dropped slightly on the 24 hours of Tuesday, with Ukraine claiming to have inflicted 1,770 casualties on Russian forces.
Over the two days, Ukraine states it has destroyed 47 Russian tanks and 130 armoured fighting vehicles, 81 of them on Monday alone. The high casualties are largely down to the Russian counter-counter offensive to recapture its own territory in Kursk, a battle to which North Korean Troops have also been deployed.
The alleged casualty toll for Monday, if correct, is double the rolling daily average said to have been inflicted on Russia this time last year and over five times that experienced by Kremlin forces even in the first days of the conflict back in March to April 2022.
The colossal increase in daily killed and injured underlines the change of tactics from rapid manoeuvre warfare in the early days of the war as Russia attempted to rush Kyiv and capture the centre of government before a resistance was able to fully generate to the attrition warfare of alleged ‘human wave’ tactics of today.
As ever in war time, the truth of casualty figures is a matter of morale and a closely guarded secret for both sides. Nevertheless, Western intelligence agencies including Ukraine’s directorate seek to assess the degree to which the war is sapping Russia’s reserves and ability to fight. Ukraine claims Russia has now suffered over 714,000 casualties — killed and injured — since the war began, which is broadly in line — if a little higher — than an estimate produced by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence at the start of October of “likely” 648,000 killed and wounded in action.
As recently as this past weekend, the United Kingdom publicly put Russian casualties at approaching, but not yet at 700,000. These in turn are an increase in Ukraine’s claim to have inflicted half a million casualties on the Russian Federation back in the Spring.
While Russia’s casualties are widely and frequently discussed, how the Ukrainian military is faring is less often a matter of public speculation by the supporting governments and media of the West. Kyiv has not made a habit of publishing its own figures, but President Zelensky did state in February 2024 — the second anniversary of the conflict beginning — that there has been 31,000 Ukrainians killed in action.
More recently, intelligence agencies-adjacent U.S. publication the Wall Street Journal put the figure close to half a million Ukrainian killed and wounded in the Autumn. The United Stated government is more conservative at around 300,000, while Russia inevitably claims the largest numbers, with over half a million stated in the Spring. Russia claims to have taken out over 32,000 in the Battle of Kursk alone, as well as hundreds of tanks.
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