Russia admits to very high casualties in Ukraine war
Russia announced today that 498 of its soldiers had been killed in the war against Ukraine and 1,597 had been wounded. Ukraine has claimed killing far more Russians than its military has acknowledged. Russian combat deaths work out to about 100 per day, and its rate of wounded is more than 300 per day. It is known that the Russian military often understates its casualty figures. The Russian Defense Ministry said that 572 of its soldiers had been captured.
These are very, very high casualties. The highest number of casualties the U.S. army suffered in Iraq that I could find was 37 killed on one day in January of 2005. Thirty-one of those were killed in the crash of a Super Stallion helicopter outside of the desert town of Rutbah. Six other American soldiers were killed in other action that day. The cause of the crash of the helicopter was unknown. The highest number of casualties previous to that day was 28 killed on March 23, 2003 during the initial invasion of Iraq.
There have been unconfirmed reports of Russian soldiers laying down their arms and surrendering, telling Ukrainian soldiers that they had been misled by their leaders who told them they were on a training mission. Some Russian soldiers were said to not understand at least initially that they were in Ukraine and not Russia.
The war is not going well for the Russian army. They have yet to move significantly into any major Ukrainian cities where urban fighting would be expected to cause even higher casualties.
No matter how this war comes to a close, it is not going to end well for Russia and its military.
You'll be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for this work, Lucien. And you'll win one.
Unfortunately, Putin -- like the Soviet leaders before him -- doesn't give a shit about his casualties. Dictators rarely do.