The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence estimated that Moscow has lost up to 250,000 soldiers in the course of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Standard reported that, if accurate, the current death toll would be Russia’s “largest losses since the Second World War,” citing an intelligence briefing from the British defense agency.
The Russian Armed Forces have “likely” sustained overall casualties of 900,000, including killed and wounded, since invading Ukraine in 2022, according to the ministry. Of that figure, it is “likely” that between 200,000 and 250,000 Russian soldiers have been killed.
“Russian President Putin and the Russian military leadership highly likely prioritise their conflict objectives over the lives of Russian soldiers,” the briefing said, according to The Standard.
“They are almost certainly prepared to tolerate continuously high casualty rates so long as this does not negatively affect public or elite support for the war, and those losses can be replaced,” it added.
According to the U.K. analysis, Putin and Russian leadership likely do not value “ethnic minority Russian citizens” as highly as other Russians, as evidenced by recruitment efforts that disproportionately focus on the “impoverished regions” such citizens hail from.
Thousands of North Korean troops have also reportedly been killed while fighting to help Russian forces recapture part of the Kursk region of Russia that was taken by Ukrainian forces last summer.
Breitbart noted that the U.K. has never revealed what its casualty figures are based on, and competing claims have emerged regarding the number of fatalities each side has sustained.
President Donald Trump reportedly said in January that he believed “almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed” since the conflict began,” while “about 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers” had died.
But at the beginning of last month, Breitbart reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy disputed the idea that his country’s death toll was as high as Russia’s, saying that Moscow had lost around 350,000 troops, compared to 45,100 on Kyiv’s side.
When the war is over, a “Coalition of the Willing” comprised of Britain, France, and other nations has committed to deploying thousands of soldiers to Ukraine to serve as peacekeepers and prevent the conflict from reigniting.
So far, Putin has categorically rejected the idea of NATO troops in Ukraine and has made several demands as a prerequisite for a pause in the fighting, including that Western nations stop supplying Kyiv with munitions and intelligence.
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