The number of battlefield casualties in Ukraine is approaching nearly 500,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, US officials have told the New York Times, marking a significant rise in the death toll this year following intense fighting in the east of the country.
Russia’s military casualties are approaching 300,000, the officials claimed, with as many as 120,000 killed in action.
Last November, Gen Mark Milley, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, said 100,000 troops on each side had been killed or wounded.
But fierce fighting near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where Russia sent convicts in human wave attacks, and an unsuccessful Ukrainian counteroffensive against fortified Russian positions, have led to significant casualties on both sides, more than doubling the number of dead since November.
Ukraine was said to have close to 70,000 killed and 100,000-120,000 wounded. Russia’s standing army is between two to three times larger than Ukraine’s, and the country has a larger population from which to replenish its frontline soldiers.
Ukraine has about 500,000 troops, while Russia has more than 1.3 million, the newspaper estimated, including reserves and Wagner paramilitaries.
Both estimates, which the officials admitted were speculative and varied widely within the government, would mark high killed-to-wounded ratios, with one Ukrainian killed for every two other soldiers wounded on the battlefield.
The officials said they had estimated the data using “satellite imagery, communication intercepts, social media and news media dispatches from reporters in the country, as well as official reporting from both governments”.
The newspaper said that officials “cautioned that casualty figures remained difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, and Kyiv does not disclose official figures”.
US intelligence officials had “spent much more time focusing on Russian casualties than those of Ukraine, their ally”, the paper added.
The reports of 120,000 Russian soldiers killed is considerably higher than the numbers confirmed by Russian journalists monitoring the conflict. Using open-source data, Meduza and BBC Russian have confirmed the deaths of 30,000 Russian soldiers with social media posts from relatives, reports in local media, or local government statements.
Using data on excess deaths from public records, Meduza and Mediazona estimated that 47,000 soldiers had been killed during the war, not counting those from the occupied territories of east Ukraine.
The numbers also marked a considerable increase from a leaked assessment from the Defence Intelligence Agency in April that said Russia had sustained as many as 223,000 casualties but just 43,000 killed in action. Similarly, Ukrainian casualties could have reached 131,000 soldiers, the document said, including a maximum 17,500 killed on the battlefield.
The number of deaths may reflect changing estimates of how many soldiers survive injuries on the battlefield. Medical care is more rudimentary than in the US military, and soldiers are often evacuated under chaotic conditions to overwhelmed hospitals and aid stations. Russians recruited from prison to fight in Ukraine said they were often sent into frontal attacks against fortified positions and abandoned on the battlefield if they were wounded.
