At least 300,000 Russian soldiers have died in the fighting in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian military – which at the same time chooses to keep its own death toll secret.
“A Russian soldier is killed every three minutes,” writes Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, on Telegram.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s military announced that 300,000 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine since the invasion in February 2022. The worst months for the Russian army are said to have been the first months of the invasion, the battle for Bachmut in early 2023 and the attacks on the city in recent weeks Avdijivka, reports Kyiv Post.
However, the figures have not been verified by independent actors and some outside observers question the data. One research articlel from ECPR recently published on the subject pointed out that the Ukrainian side probably exaggerates the number of Russian soldiers killed.
“A Russian soldier is killed every three minutes”
If the figure of 300,000 dead Russian soldiers is correct, it is a heavy blow to the country’s demography, writes the Kyiv Post. In a post on Telegram, Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, comments on the high death toll. Gerashchenko believes that this is equivalent to one Russian soldier being killed every three minutes.
“The number is so high that if you put them from Moscow to St. Petersburg, a corpse could walk the whole distance without ever touching the ground,” he writes on Telegram.
Both sides in the war have been sparing in publishing figures on their own death tolls. According to the ECPR report, the Ukrainian military suffered heavy losses during the fighting for Bachmut in the summer of 2022. Between 700 – 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers are said to have died every day during that period, according to the report.
Another study on the subject states that Russia probably suffers greater losses than Ukraine. It is explained by the fact that the Russian side has carried out a greater number of risk-taking mass offensives. Ukraine also has superior medical support compared to the Russian side as well as the Ukrainian army having better access to doctors.