The Russian army has lost 120,000 people in battle, and more than 300,000 troops have been completely lost: how can it be so miserable?
The full-scale conflict between Russia and Ukraine that broke out in 2022 should be the largest, most troop involved, and most tragic war since the Cold War. The casualty figures on both sides have also been a major concern. As far as the casualties on the Russian side are concerned, the official figures have not been officially announced, and the so-called declared results of the destruction of the enemy announced by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine are obviously too high. According to the principle of "self-loss and self-report", it is also impossible to explain Russia's losses with the results announced by Ukraine. As it stands, Russian casualties can only be extrapolated by third-party researchers based on a variety of other figures and some methods.
The BBC believes that by April 2024, 123,000 Russian troops have been killed and more than 210,000 injured. The "Russian army" here includes not only the Russian regular army, but also military organizations such as the "Wagner" group, as well as the armed forces of Donetsk and Luhansk, which can be regarded as the sum of Russian military forces fighting against Ukraine.
The Russians have a unique advantage in the fact that BCC's inferences need to be verified by other researchers. Mediazona, a Russian anti-war media outlet, recorded the obituaries of Russian troops on social media, and synthesized and extrapolated through a large number of figures such as the inheritance documents of the deceased, the number of notarized wills, and some known compensation payments made public in Russia, and concluded that by the end of 2023, 75,000 Russian troops had been killed. Based on the rate of losses derived from the above figures, the website extrapolates that by the spring of 2024, the number of Russian troops killed will reach 83,000. This figure only counts the Russians, and does not include the military forces of Luda and Don, which are also under the command of the Russian army, and if they are added, it will reach about 110,000, which is similar to the BBC figure.
It is also important to note that the BBC's 210,000 wounded refer to serious injuries that cannot be returned to the front line and need to be demobilized, and these forces can no longer be used for the war effort. Equivalent to the death and serious injuries that need to be decommissioned, the Russian army has completely lost more than 300,000 troops.
Why did the Russian army suffer such heavy losses?
The first is that the intensity of the war is extremely high, and it is by no means comparable to the conflicts in the Middle East. For example, in the long-term security war waged by the US military in Iraq, the number of casualties in 10 years was less than 5,000, and the weapons it faced were more rockets, mortars, mines, rifles, and so on. Russia and Ukraine, on the other hand, have invested almost all their troops and firepower into the war, which has become a "fight to the death" between the two countries that is related to their fate. Thousands of tanks, thousands of heavy artillery, countless drones, but also bombers and tactical missiles...... The lethality caused is terrifying.
The Russian army is certainly a battle-hardened force, but the Ukrainian army is also not weak, not only inheriting the mantle of the Soviet era, but also receiving assistance from NATO. For the first time in the heart of post-World War II Europe, where heavy equipment was brutally exchanged and tanks were blown away like toys and their turrets turned into twisted wreckage, the Balkans were not part of the heart of Europe. Russia and Ukraine are evenly matched, and both have suffered extremely heavy casualties.
The second is the problem of the Russian army itself. After entering the stage of positional warfare, the Russian army, which had been replenished by mobilized troops, was no longer troubled by the lack of troops, and many Russian commanders had the extremely bad command style in Russian history: winning victory through barbaric tactics regardless of casualties. Both in Tsarist Russia and in the Soviet Union, the Russian army was known for its tactics of dragging down the opponent with heavy casualties and achieving victory at any cost.
Here is an example of the 155th Brigade of the Naval Infantry of the Russian Army (equivalent to the Marines of other countries) that fought in Vuhledar. At the beginning of 2023, the brigade commander of this brigade organized his subordinates to launch a number of barbaric group charges against the positions of the Ukrainian army, and a large number of personnel and heavy equipment were destroyed by the Ukrainian army on the unsheltered field. Although the brigade's progress on the front can only be counted in "meters", the brigade commander was still awarded the medal for "combat bravery".
In Bakhmut and Avdeyevka, Western observers have also witnessed Russian offensive operations regardless of casualties. For the front line, the Ukrainian army, which was afraid of casualties, was finally repelled by the Russian army, which did not count casualties, before the war of attrition, and lost many points. But for ordinary Russian soldiers, such cruel tactics have also greatly depleted Russia's front-line combat strength.