US intelligence report reveals Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 casualties

A recently declassified US intelligence report indicates that the war in Ukraine has resulted in significant losses for Russia, with approximately 315,000 troops dead or injured—equivalent to nearly 90 per cent of its initial personnel when the war began.

Furthermore, the report highlights that Russia’s military modernisation has been set back by 18 years due to losses in both personnel and armored vehicles to the Ukrainian military.

According to the Reuters report, the Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Russian defense ministry and Kremlin officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The source spoke as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made a last-ditch plea to US lawmakers on Capitol Hill to keep US military aid flowing to Ukraine, first meeting behind closed doors with US senators.

The source said the recently declassified US intelligence report assessed that Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 with 360,000 personnel.

Since then, the report found, 315,000 Russian troops, or about 87 per cent of the total with which it started the war, have been killed or injured, the source said.

The source said those losses are the reason Russia has been forced to loosen recruitment standards and draft convicts and older civilians to deploy in Ukraine.

“The scale of losses has forced Russia to take extraordinary measures to sustain its ability to fight. Russia declared a partial mobilisation of 300,000 personnel in late 2022, and has relaxed standards to allow recruitment of convicts and older civilians,” the assessment said, according to the source.

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

With inputs from Reuters