Russia may have just experienced its deadliest month of its invasion yet, a combination of human-wave tactics and Ukraine’s counter-invasion of Russian home territory combining to see casualty figures continue to soar.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence says daily military casualties — killed and injured — reached a new high in September, averaging 1,271 a day through the month. The intelligence digest shows this new level of daily losses are not just the highest level of the conflict yet, but are now head-and-shoulders above those inflicted on Russia even in the bloody first 12 months of the war Moscow started.
Even at its peaks, daily average casualties for Russia in 2022 were less than half what they are now.
The Ministry of Defence in its analysis states the surge in casualty rate this year is “almost certainly” down to Ukraine’s counter-invasion of Russia in Kharkov and Kursk, and Russia’s human-wave tactics. London describes these huge pushes as: “mass to overwhelm defensive positions and achieve tactical gains”. There is no end in sight, the analysis suggests, saying the onset of winter hasn’t seen a decrease in intensity in the past two years, and nothing is likely to change now.
In all Russia is “likely” to have suffered over 648,000 casualties, the digest said, citing Ukrainian government figures. Ukraine state media itself claims the nation inflicted 38,130 casualties on Russian armed forces in September, and also destroyed 6,283 vehicles of various types. This includes, they said, 291 Russian tanks and 787 armoured vehicles.
While Western sources like the British government, or the interminable leaks and briefings handed to a small handful of beltway-interest newspapers by the U.S. intelligence community, tend to focus on Russian casualties, understanding those in context is difficult as Ukrainian figures are much harder to come by. As reported in May of this issue:
Secrecy in wartime is normal and the invasion of Ukraine is no exception, so getting a realistic appraisal for losses for either side is difficult. As previously reported, Ukraine’s claimed Russian body count is considerably higher than that occasionally published by Britain’s Ministry of Defence, for instance. In March of this year, while Ukraine was claiming 416,000 Russian dead and wounded, the United Kingdom publicly put it at 315,000.
Estimates for Ukrainian casualties are harder to come by. Kyiv doesn’t generally publish figures for its own war dead and injured, but President Zelensky did speak out on the subject on the second anniversary of the conflict starting. The 300,000 figure alleged by the Kremlin was a “deceitful” lie, he said, while asserting in February the true number was 31,000 killed.
In April, a journalistic project collating data of Russian graveyard burials, social media commemorations, and newspaper obituaries reported it had managed to “confirm” 50,000 Russian dead.
