Russia’s ‘irrecoverable losses’ in Ukraine: more than 90,000 troops dead, disabled, or AWOL

More than 90,000 troops make up Russia’s “irrecoverable” military losses in Ukraine, as reported by the Russian media project iStories (or Vazhnye Istorii). One of the two sources of this information works in the FSB; the other is a former state security officer.

“Irrecoverable losses” is a category that includes servicemen who were killed, went missing, died from their wounds or were disabled and cannot return to military service.

This new estimate is close to the figures stated earlier by the Pentagon and the British Defense Ministry. Last August, the Pentagon estimated that 70–80 thousand Russian troops had been killed or critically wounded since the start of the war. In September, the British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace stated that the Russian army’s total losses exceeded 80,000; of those, about 25,000 were thought to have been killed.

Since the start of the invasion, the Russian Defense Ministry accounted for casualties only three times. The last time this happened was September 21, when the Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war.

Mediazona and BBC News Russian have published a joint report of Russia’s war casualties, based on official documentation available through open sources. 7,184 documented deaths were the minimal toll as of October 7, based on open-source information.

The Ukrainian military’s General Staff states that, as of the morning of October 12, 63,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine.

Thinking inside the box

Increasingly desperate for manpower in recent months, Russian authorities have started tapping a “resource” the country has plenty of: prisoners. If you think that sounds like it would have obvious drawbacks, you’re right.

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