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US intelligence: The war in Ukraine has cost Russia 315,000 casualties

2023-12-12 20:59:00, Kosova & Bota CNA
US intelligence: The war in Ukraine has cost Russia 315,000 casualties
Members of the Omega Special Purpose Unit of the Ukrainian National Guard fire a mortar at Russian troops in the front-line town of Avdiivka, amid Russia's offensive in Ukraine.

A declassified US intelligence report estimated that the war in Ukraine has cost Russia 315,000 dead and wounded, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began, a source familiar with the intelligence said on Tuesday.

The report also estimates that Moscow's losses of personnel and armored vehicles to the Ukrainian military have set back Russia's military modernization by 18 years, the source said.

The Russian embassy and the Russian defense ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Russian officials have said that Western estimates of the number of Russian dead in the war are grossly exaggerated and almost always underestimate Ukrainian losses, which Russian officials say are huge.

The source spoke as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a final plea to US lawmakers on Capitol Hill to keep US military aid flowing to Ukraine, the first closed-door meeting with US senators.

"The scale of the losses has forced Russia to take extraordinary measures to support its ability to fight. Russia has announced a partial mobilization of 300,000 personnel by the end of 2022 and has relaxed standards to allow the recruitment of convicts and civilians elderly," the assessment said, according to the Reuters source.

The Russian army is left with 1,300 armored vehicles on the battlefield and needs to bolster those forces with T62 tanks manufactured in the 1970s, the source said.

Kiev treats its losses as a state secret, and officials say revealing the figure could damage its war effort. A New York Times report in August quoted US officials as saying the Ukrainian death toll was close to 70,000./ CNA





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