The White House said on Monday that Russia has claimed 100,000 casualties over the past five months, with more than 20,000 dead in the protracted conflict in Ukraine.
It reflects how Moscow’s hopes for a quick victory gave way to a relentless war of attrition that came at a huge cost.
Combined with earlier estimates by other US officials, the total number of Russian casualties since last year’s invasion of Moscow could reach 200,000.
White House security spokesman John Kirby said Russia’s attempt at an offensive in the eastern Donbas region, through the city of Bakhmut, had largely failed.
“For Russia, this effort, especially in Bakhmut, has come at a terribly, terribly high cost,” he told reporters.
White House security spokesman John Kirby said Russia’s attempt at an offensive in the eastern Donbas region, through the city of Bakhmut, had largely failed.
Police are seen at the scene of a residential area hit by a Russian military strike, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine, in the town of Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk region
“Russia has exhausted its military supplies and its armed forces and since December alone … we estimate that Russia has suffered more than 100,000 casualties, including more than 20,000 killed in action, nearly half of whom were Wagner soldiers, the majority of whom were Russian were convicts thrown into battle… [without] adequate combat training, combat leadership, or some sense of organizational command and control.”
He said the information was based on newly released intelligence, but gave no further details.
Wagner is a Russian paramilitary force that forms the backbone of the Russian military in some areas.
Over the weekend, the leader said he may be forced to withdraw from Bakhmut amid mounting casualties, and said he had appealed to Moscow for more ammunition.
“Every day we have piles of thousands of bodies that we put in coffins and send home,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an interview with a Russian military blogger.
The new casualty estimates suggest that Russian losses have accelerated in recent months.
Last November, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US believed Russia had killed or wounded 100,000 soldiers in the first eight months of fighting.
A Ukrainian soldier fires an RPG during his training on the frontline near Vuhledar, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Monday, May 1, 2023
The White House has repeatedly pointed to the cost of the ongoing war to Russia. And in recent weeks it has returned to the price it paid to take control of Bakhmut, which it says has limited strategic value to the overall course of the war.
In the briefing with reporters, Kirby compared the toll to some of the most bitter battles of World War II, including the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front, and the Guadalcanal Campaign, the first major Allied offensive. against Japan.
But he declined to say how many Ukrainian troops were killed or wounded in the fighting.
“I’m just not going to put information in the public domain that will make things even more difficult for Ukrainians,” he said.
“If they decide they want to release and make their victim numbers public, that’s up to them to do.
“But I don’t have to show the same courtesy to the Russians.”
Milley said in November there were probably about 100,000 Ukrainian casualties as well.