War victims
“WSJ”: Russia and Ukraine lost a million soldiers
Updated on September 17, 2024Reading time: 2 minutes
Russia has been waging its war of aggression against Ukraine for two and a half years. Neither side officially discloses their losses – but the estimates are devastating.
According to research by the US newspaper “Wall Street Journal”, hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides were injured and killed in the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Ukrainian troops suffered around 80,000 dead and 400,000 wounded soldiers, the paper reported, citing a confidential Ukrainian estimate. According to Western intelligence estimates, Russia has lost 600,000 soldiers – 200,000 dead and 400,000 injured, writes the Wall Street Journal. There is no official information from either Kiev or Moscow about their own losses.
However, the newspaper's information corresponds to the British Ministry of Defense's estimates of Moscow's losses in the war. According to this, 610,000 Russian soldiers have died or been so badly wounded since the start of the war that they are no longer fit for duty. “A tactic based on massive waves of infantry has forced Russia to replenish front-line forces with a constant stream of new recruits,” the ministry said on Platform X. Accordingly, Moscow is now finding it more difficult to attract volunteers.
The high toll paid by the two warring parties also has fatal long-term effects. Even before the armed conflict broke out, Russia and Ukraine were struggling with shrinking populations. For Ukraine, whose population is only around a quarter of Russia's, the problem is existential, writes the Wall Street Journal. While Russia can at least partially make up for the losses on the front by occupying Ukrainian territories and absorbing the population living there, Kiev also has to cope with a mass exodus abroad.
The number of civilian casualties was not included in the calculation anyway. According to human rights activists, thousands of people have been killed, especially on the Ukrainian side, as a result of the systematic shelling of cities and towns.
