Russia has been suffering huge casualties but this shouldn’t matter

The war in Ukraine is the bloodiest state-on-state conflict on European soil since the end of World War II.

According to data released by Ukraine and the West, the total casualty figures for both combatants exceed one million. The Russian forces, in particular, continue to take devastating losses.

The Russian forces have taken approximately 776,000 casualties since February 24, 2022. Of that number, about 200,000 are killed and 575,000 wounded. To put these numbers in perspective, the Russian forces have lost their entire initial invasion force (around 190,000 troops) killed in a “special military operation” that was designed to last from three days to a couple of weeks.

In comparison, the Ukrainian forces have taken approximately 420,000 casualties, including around 43,000 killed and 370,000 wounded.

In November, the average daily number of Russian casualties, killed and wounded, reached a new record high. According to the data released by Kyiv, which are largely corroborated by Western intelligence services and militaries, the Russian military, paramilitary units, and pro-Russian separatist forces took an average of 1,523 casualties during November.

“This is the third straight month that Russian forces have sustained new war high average daily losses. 28 November also saw a new war high of 2,030 losses in a single day, the first time more than 2,000 have been reported,” the British Ministry of Defence assessed in early December.

This figure was trampled by a new record of 2,200 casualties on December 20.

“The high rate of casualties is likely reflective of the higher tempo of Russian operations and offensives. Russia is attempting to increase the pressure on Ukrainian lines as they seek to push Ukrainian Forces back on several fronts including Kursk, Kupiansk, Toretsk, Pokrovsk and Velyka Novosilka,” the British Ministry of Defence added.

In its early December assessment, the British Military Intelligence assessed that “Russia’s casualty rate will likely continue to average above 1,000 a day. . . despite the onset of winter, with continued dismounted infantry attacks on multiple axes.” However, even that estimate proved to be an underestimation.

As of December 23, the Russian forces had already suffered approximately 35,690 casualties, or about an average of 1,551 killed or wounded troops a day; this is already higher than the previous month’s average and with eight days still to go.

Yet, Russia’s extremely high casualty figures become irrelevant if the Kremlin can maintain such a high attrition rate without any operational or domestic consequences. Kyiv and the Ukrainian military leadership shouldn’t fixate on the number of Russian losses; rather, Russia’s high losses are a means to an end. Similarly to how the U.S. military leadership concentrated on the high enemy body count in Vietnam and lost the war for other reasons, the Ukrainian military leadership needs to be clear that hundreds of thousands of Russian troops killed and wounded don’t equate with victory.

To be sure, killing, wounding, and capturing as many Russian and North Korean troops as possible is important. But Kyiv and the Ukrainian military leadership need to go back to the counteroffensive if they want to win this war. And when the time comes again for the Ukrainian forces to attack, they need to be ready to breach the Russian defensive lines and achieve an operational breakthrough like the ones they managed in the fall of 2022.

Feature Image: Russian soldiers wearing Ratnik armor variants. (Photo by Vitaly Kuzmin/Wikimedia Commons)

Read more from Sandboxx News

• Congress demands answers on low testosterone issues among special operators
• What it’s like to visit Korea’s Demilitarized Zone
• Space Force to deploy new jammers to yell at enemy satellites
• Ukraine peace negotiations don’t look promising
• Unit 684 – The South Korean suicide squad with the tragic history