NATO has estimated the number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine since the start of the invasion at between 7,000 and 15,000. That estimate is roughly equivalent to the number of Soviet soldiers killed in more than a decade of fighting in Afghanistan. According to a reportage in the New York Times In mid-March, U.S. intelligence officials said they were confident up to 7,000 Russians had been killed by that point. The the Washington Post reported about the same time that a Russian news website published a file – and then downloaded it again – claiming that up to 10,000 soldiers had been killed so far in the conflict. CBC News is looking closely at why Russia’s losses were so high and how long they can be sustained, as well as the difficulty of obtaining accurate statistics from a war zone.

How accurate are the statistics from Ukraine?

While experts say there is reason to believe that some estimates of Russian mortality are approaching the limit, it is almost impossible to give a clear account of the death toll on the battlefield. “In wartime you have the fog of war, which makes it very difficult to get accurate numbers,” said Walter Dorn, a professor of defense studies at the Royal Military College. “To see deaths you have to go to places where there are people dying, which usually means there is a dangerous threat. Therefore, it is difficult for objective observers to get that number.” Stephen Saideman, president of Paterson International Affairs at Carleton University and director of the Canadian Defense and Security Network, told CBC News that experts were reluctant to trust the information provided by Russia or Ukraine. “Each side has an incentive to inflate the damage it does and deflate the damage it has done,” he said. “It’s part of every war to do that.” Experts from the US and NATO are using models to calculate the reported losses of ground intelligence, satellite imagery and Russian military awareness, making them the most reliable sources we can obtain, Saideman and Dorn said. “We know the size of a Russian battalion, we know how many guys get into a Russian tank, which tank gets four, which tank gets three and we have a lot of videos and photos,” Seidemann said. Residents of the area pass by a wrecked Russian tank in the town of Trostsyanets, about 400 kilometers east of Kiev, in Ukraine on March 28. (Efrem Lukatsky / The Associated Press)
Sean Maloney is a professor of military history at Royal Military College who served as a Canadian Army historian on the conflict in Afghanistan. He told the CBC that, given his knowledge of the Russian military and sources inside Belarus and Russia, NATO’s high-level estimate of Russian casualties is likely to be accurate. “I am confident, with the sources I have, that the number of Russians killed in the action is over 15,000,” Maloney said.

Why were so many Russian soldiers killed so soon?

If this estimate is correct, it begs the question: Why did a single month of war in Ukraine kill almost as many Russian soldiers as the Soviet Union’s ten-year war in Afghanistan? “This would always be more bloody than the wars we are used to, because it’s just a higher level of explosive power meets a higher level of explosive power,” Seidemann said. Experts say Western democracies have come to expect casualties similar to those caused by U.S. conflicts in the Middle East. Saideman and Maloney said it was a very different kind of war. Afghanistan and Iraq have been “low-intensity conflicts,” Maloney said. “Yes they are violent, yes people are being killed,” he said. “But [in Ukraine] we are dealing with high-intensity, mechanized warfare where you have a large number of vehicles, a large number of personnel, a lot of air support colliding at the same time, everywhere. “This is continuous, in general.” A captured Russian Air Force officer whose plane was shot down by Ukrainian forces reacts during a press conference in Kyiv on Friday, March 11th. (Associated Press / Efrem Lukatsky)
Another reason for the large number of casualties, Seidemann said, is Russia’s poor strategy. “The Russians did not prepare the battlefield at all,” he said. “They did not do many of the things that the US / NATO dogma would normally do, that is, remove as much of its anti-aircraft capability as possible, hit the command nodes. “The fact that Ukrainians still have power, they still have the Internet, they still have communications means that it is much easier for Ukrainians to make smart decisions and communicate them effectively.” Seidemann said Russia’s military medical services were also downgraded, which contributed to the death toll. Reports from Ukraine suggest that Russian doctors are not treating cases of frostbite as well as more serious injuries. And because there was no bombing before the invasion, he said, airspace over Ukraine remains in dispute. Ukrainian forces have shot down helicopters that may have been carrying wounded soldiers behind the front lines. The mother of Russian soldier Rustam Zarifulin, who was killed while fighting in Ukraine, weeps surrounded by relatives during a farewell ceremony in his hometown of Kara-Balta, 60 km west of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on March 27. (Associated Press / Vladimir Voronin)
Maloney said the poor condition of the Russian army had left troops on the ground with insufficient equipment. “They do not care about their staff, their vehicles are not equipped to protect their people. They are not like our vehicles with fire extinguishing systems and all that,” he said. “I have not seen an armored ambulance this whole war. We have, but I have not seen an armored ambulance at all.”

Can Russia withstand these losses for much longer?

To maintain these heavy losses and continue the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin must maintain the morale of the battlefield and maintain the authoritarian regime he leads. Experts say there is reason to believe that both Russia’s ability to wage war and Putin’s commitment to power could be threatened. Maloney said the Russian military was inadequately trained. He said an estimated 31 senior Russian servicemen, from colonels to generals, had been killed in the fighting, as were many highly trained soldiers. The loss of officers and experienced fighters can undermine the morale of the troops. However, poor training, insufficient logistical support and substandard medical support have a greater impact on Russia’s war effort, experts say. “Soldiers who are currently fighting, if they see that their colleagues are not being recognized, will lose their will to fight,” Dorn said. “If they see their dead comrades, for whom they mourn … they do not return to their homeland … it will have a huge impact on the morale of the Russian troops.” Despite his iron grip on Russia, Putin must also bear in mind the threat of a backlash inside. “The basis of his power is intelligence and the military, and if he loses the support of generals and infantry, then he knows he can not stay in power for long. There is a huge danger to him,” Dorn said. Retired Major Michael Boire, a former NATO military planner and assistant professor of military history at the Royal Military College, disagreed. He said that while a high death toll would be a problem for a country like Canada, Russians are used to the bad news. “A democracy would say these are high, unacceptable, horrific numbers. The average Russian would say, ‘This is war, this is it, this is how you do business,’” Boire said. “The average Russian expects life to be tough.” Seidemann said that during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, a group of mothers organized to pressure the regime to end the war and bring their sons home. In the short term, he said, losses on the battlefield in Ukraine would require Putin to spend more resources to retain power. In the long run, he added, there could be two ways. “At some point there will be a large gathering of people and the Russian repression mechanism will appear and they will be faced with the choice of whether to shoot these protesters or not,” he said. “And we never know how this will happen until it really happens.”