Russia’s death toll from the war in Ukraine has reached as high as 60,000, the UK said, an estimate that draws attention to Moscow’s strategy of sending poorly protected soldiers on near-suicidal missions to breach Ukrainian lines.
In its daily intelligence briefing on Friday, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces and private military companies fighting alongside them as paramilitary forces had lost 40,000 to 60,000 troops and suffered up to 200,000 casualties, including soldiers killed or wounded in action became.
The estimate comes as Russian forces continued their attacks along eastern Ukraine on Friday and key Western powers met in Munich for an annual European security conference attended by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and US Vice President Kamala Harris.
At the conference, Messrs. Scholz and Macron pledged to continue their support for Ukraine, but added that they would refrain from supplying new weapon systems such as aircraft. Mr Macron said he hoped to eventually end the war through negotiations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in a video address that the only way to secure peace is a decisive defeat by Russia and called on European powers to give Ukraine the necessary firepower.
Both the European powers and the US have struggled to strike the right balance between providing military support to Ukraine for self-defense without provoking Russia into escalating the war. A senior US official, meanwhile, said Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 and is home to a large Russian naval base, should be demilitarized as a minimum measure.
“Regardless of what Ukrainians decide about Crimea, where they fight, Ukraine will not be safe unless Crimea is at least demilitarized,” Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said in a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
From the start of the war, Kiev has insisted that it will regain all territories lost to Russia, including Crimea. Western officials have sent mixed signals. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in December that Washington’s focus was on helping Ukraine retake territory Russia had seized since its February 24 invasion.
Moscow said Ms Nuland’s comment on Crimea showed Washington’s involvement in the conflict and its encouragement for Ukrainian offensive actions.
“They supply it with weapons in large quantities, provide information and simply participate in the planning of combat operations,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday, quoted by the state news agency RIA Novosti.
US officials estimate that more than 200,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the invasion began. US and European officials have said the toll is likely to rise further in the coming weeks as Russia mounts more offensive operations in the east to try to jump-start the war.
The casualty rate has risen sharply since Russia announced a mobilization in September that brought 300,000 troops into the military, many of them under-skilled and under-equipped. The UK said most of Russia’s casualties were due to artillery strikes and inadequate first aid provision.
“By modern standards, these figures represent a high ratio of personnel killed to wounded,” it said. “This is almost certainly due to the extremely rudimentary level of medical care in much of the force.”
A Ukrainian mortar team in Bakhmut, Ukraine, waits for the shelling to stop before returning fire at a Russian position.
Photo: Getty Images
Ukrainian troops defending Bakhmut say the rate of Russian bombing is increasing every day.
Photo: yasuyoshi chiba/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Alongside the mobilization announced by President Vladimir Putin last fall, the Wagner paramilitary group has recruited tens of thousands of convicts from Russian prisons in exchange for an amnesty after six months of service in Ukraine, where it led the brutal month-long attack on Bakhmut.
These convict recruits have been actively involved in offensives aimed at breaching Ukrainian lines at Bakhmut, Ukrainian military officials say. The UK said up to half of the convicts used by Wagner in Ukraine have now ended up as victims.
Russia has been gaining some ground around Bakhmut and other parts of eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, using a tactic military experts say is reminiscent of the methods used by the Soviet Red Army in World War II, as waves of soldiers were sent to storm enemy positions without artillery or air support.
Ukrainian troops defending Bakhmut say the tactics stunned them as groups of Russian soldiers advancing house by house are mowed down by Ukrainian artillery strikes spotted by reconnaissance drones. They also say that the rate of Russian bombing is increasing every day.
“We spend most of our time in basements,” Yuriy Syrotyuk, a 47-year-old Ukrainian grenadier, said on the phone from Bakhmut. “We take turns occupying the trenches, going back and forth in armored vehicles.” He said Russia, which was attacking the city from three directions, was using Grad multiple rocket launchers in failed attempts to drive out the Ukrainians.
Ukrainian officials say Russia intends to capture Bakhmut by the first anniversary of the war, although military experts say that’s unrealistic. “Russian forces do not appear to be accelerating their rate of advance around Bakhmut and are unlikely to meet this target reported on Feb. 24,” the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said Thursday.
North of Bakhmut, Ukraine has been trying for weeks to retake the Russian-held city of Kreminna, which would allow access to roads leading to the major occupied cities in the Luhansk region. Serhiy Haidai, the exiled governor of Luhansk, said Friday Russia was throwing everything it could at Ukrainian forces pushing for Kreminna.
“The situation is very difficult in all directions because the number of offensives and shelling has increased sharply,” Mr. Haidai said in an interview with Ukrainian television. “But as difficult as the situation is, it’s under control.”
During Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s visit to Kiev on Friday, Mr Zelensky thanked the Netherlands for its commitment to transfer a Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine and for its cooperation with Denmark and Germany to send 100 Leopard tanks to Ukraine .
Russia has been gaining ground around Bakhmut and other parts of eastern Ukraine in recent weeks.
Photo: yasuyoshi chiba/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
—Georgi Kantchev contributed to this article.
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at [email protected]
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