More than 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and more than 80,000 injured in just five months of fighting in Ukraine, an acceleration in already heavy losses for Moscow, US intelligence officials estimate.
Most of the troops were killed in brutal trench warfare for the small eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russia has repeatedly claimed it was on the brink of capturing, White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said when he revealed the new estimate on Monday.
“Russia’s attempt at an offensive in the Donbas, largely through Bakhmut, has failed … Russia has been unable to seize any really strategically significant territory,” Kirby said.
The losses are an acceleration in Russian casualties even from the bloody first days of the war, and overshadow some of the bloodiest allied battles of the second world war, Kirby added. That includes the Guadalcanal campaign, the first major Allied offensive against Japan, which also lasted five months.
“It’s three times the number of killed in action that the United States faced on the Guadalcanal campaign in World War II,” the AP quoted Kirby saying.
Kirby did not detail how the US calculated the deaths, but said about half were fighting under the Wagner mercenary group, rather than with the Russian military. They were being sent into battle without proper training or leadership, he added.
Founded by a close Putin aide, the group has recruited heavily in prisons, offering convicts who survive six months on the bloody frontlines an amnesty. The US figures underline what a deadly gamble those who accept are making.
Ukrainian forces are still holding out in a corner of Bakhmut. Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of ground forces, said on Monday “the situation is quite difficult”, but Ukrainian forces are still counterattacking against Russians.
The two sides are fighting for control of a road west out of the city. It serves as the last vital supply line for Ukrainian troops fighting on the ground there.
If Bakhmut does finally fall, it might give Russia a route towards bigger towns to the west, including Kramatorsk. But after months of heavy losses, Moscow’s bitter push for the shelled-out ruins of this provincial town feels more symbolic than strategic.
“This attempted effort, particularly in Bakhmut, has come at a terribly, terribly high cost. Russia has exhausted its military stockpiles and its armed forces,” Kirby said.
After Russian troops retreated from Kyiv, and were pushed out of southern Kherson city and away from eastern Kharkiv, Bakhmut became a focus of the Russian military effort.
The mounting losses, and intense propaganda campaign about Russian military advances, will only have given political impetus to Putin’s drive to seize it.
In November US officials estimated Russian casualties for the first eight months of the war were at a similar level to that reached between December and April, with more than 100,000 dead and injured.
The US has declined to estimate Ukrainian casualties publicly, saying it is sensitive military information that could undermine an ally. Leaked secret briefing documents estimated the toll in February had reached between 15,500 and 17,500 killed, and more than 100,000 injured.
