Losing nearly a thousand soldiers a day isn’t stopping the Russians from launching mass attacks on Ukraine, the UK’s defense ministry said in an intelligence dispatch on Sunday.
“Since the February 2022 invasion, Russian forces have sustained 658 losses a day on average,” the UK’s defense ministry said in a post on X, which collated the number of Russian casualties and injured.
“Each year has seen a rise in the daily average loss rate from 400 in 2022, to 693 in 2023, to 913 through the first quarter of 2024,” the post continued. “The increase reflects Russia’s ongoing reliance on mass to sustain pressure on Ukrainian frontlines.”
The intelligence dispatch noted that the number of daily Russian losses experienced a slightly dip in March. The drop in numbers, the UK defense ministry said, “corresponds with fewer reported attacks over the past month.”
“The reduction in Russian offensive operations highly likely reflects a series of factors: a period of rest and refit following the capture of Avdiivka, and intent to reduce death notifications during the Russian elections,” the post said.
This isn’t the first time the number of Russian casualties have come under the spotlight. Russia’s reliance on attritional warfare meant that it has weathered significant losses since it invaded Ukraine.
In January, a Ukrainian commander told CNN that Russia was mounting their assaults with “non-stop” human-wave attacks.
“Assault after assault, non-stop. If we kill 40 to 70 of them with drones in a day, the next day they renew their forces and continue to attack,” the commander said.
The ravenous need for more troops meant that Russia has had to tap on inmates to fuel their war effort. In fact, Russia’s military has recruited so many prisoners that it even had to close some of its prisons to “optimize and save money.”
But the narrow focus on cobbling troops together for the war might have long-term implications on Russia’s economy. The Ukraine war has left Russia with a severe labor shortage.
In December, the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Economics said the Russian economy was short of around 5 million workers.
“To date, Russia has highly likely lost over 355,000 personnel killed and wounded during the Ukraine war,” the UK defense ministry said in an intelligence dispatch on March 3.
Representatives for Russia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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