Putin reveals Russia's army losses in war against Ukraine for the first time

Serhii Palya

Source: ISW

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has said that Russian forces are losing an estimated 20,000 lives a month in Ukraine. This figure is roughly equal to or slightly lower than the number of new military personnel that Russia generates each month.

Points of attention

Russian dictator Putin announced the losses of the Russian army in the war with Ukraine, which amounted to approximately 20,000 people per month.
Analysts assume that 5,000 Russians die in battle every month, and the number of wounded service members is about 15,000.
Ukrainian sources and experts point to a reduction in Russia's pace of recruiting new military personnel before the planned offensive in 2024.
Russian troops managed to maintain the pace of the offensive in Ukraine thanks to the steady generation of forces and the active formation of military-level reserves.
Forecasts show that Russian troops will recruit about 100,000 more soldiers for new offensive operations this year.

Is Putin's data on the losses of the Russian army accurate?

According to analysts, the dictator assumed that 5,000 Russians die every month in fighting in Ukraine. Given the standard ratio of wounded to killed as three to one, about 15,000 servicemen of the Russian Federation are injured every month.

ISW is unable to confirm the loss data announced by Putin, but this number coincides with the lower limit of Ukraine's reported losses of the aggressor's army.

The commander of the Land Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, noted at the beginning of May that Russian troops lose 25 to 30 thousand killed and wounded every month.

In mid-January of this year, the deputy chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU), Maj Gen Vadym Skibitskyy, reported that Russia was recruiting about 30,000 people a month.

Meanwhile, the ISW report notes that Russian officials are concerned about a slowdown in recruitment ahead of a planned offensive in the summer of 2024. It is also unknown whether the Ministry of Defense of Russia managed to maintain recruitment at the current level of 30 thousand people per month.

In addition, over the past few months, the Russians have created a more stable force generation apparatus for current offensive operations and have begun to form operational and strategic-level reserves more actively.

This allowed Russian troops to immediately replenish losses at the front and maintain the overall pace of the offensive in Ukraine. At the same time, such actions have imposed limitations on the extent to which Russian forces can intensify offensive actions in each direction, the ISW report says.

At the beginning of May, Lieutenant General Pavlyuk stated that the Russian troops intend to train about 100,000 more servicemen to participate in offensive operations in June and July this year and to train another 300,000 servicemen by the end of 2024.