Russia reaches grim milestone in troop losses

Russian losses in Vladimir PutinThe full-scale invasion of Ukraine has exceeded 700,000, according to Kyiv, which has trolled Moscow over the round number of such a grim milestone.

In its daily report, the Ukrainian military said Monday that Russian troops suffered 1,300 personnel casualties the previous day, bringing the total since the start of the full-scale invasion to 700,390.

“Perfect numbers, like perfect people, are very rare.” Rene Descartes,” the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense wrote on X, citing the French philosopher.

Newsweek contacted the Russian Ministry of Defense for comments. The exact death toll, which Ukraine says is “approximate” and includes both killed and wounded, is difficult to ascertain as both sides remain tight-lipped about their losses.

Russia has not updated its figures since September 2022, when it said just under 6,000 people had been killed, while Ukraine’s president Vladimir Zelensky said in February that 31,000 Ukrainian troops had died, although that was lower than Western estimates.

US officials reported New York Times that September was the bloodiest month of the war since it began in February 2022, and that more than 600,000 people had been killed and wounded, with a surge driven by attacks in eastern Ukraine where Putin’s forces have made slow progress but at great cost in personnel.

This was reported by an unnamed American official. New York Times stated that more than 57,500 Ukrainian troops were killed and 250,000 wounded.

Estonian intelligence estimates that Russia may have lost around 40,000 soldiers in October alone. This figure is confirmed by other estimates and exceeds the 30,000 new soldiers that Ukrainian military intelligence believes are being recruited every month.

In a mid-October update, independent Russian news outlet Mediazona reported that 75,382 killed Russian military personnel had been identified, an increase of 2,483 since the beginning of the month.

Counting, combined with BBC The Russian language is derived from verified information, publicly available sources such as obituaries, reports from relatives, regional media reports and statements from local authorities, and given the level of evidence required, means the real number is likely to be much higher.

Amid mounting casualties, the Kremlin handed out manuals to soldiers on how to dig and maintain mass graves, filled with diagrams showing mass graves with body bags stacked on top of each other. Daily Telegraph reported.

It also details the equipment and labor required to dig a grave for 100 people, which would require 368.5 man-hours “under normal operating conditions.”

Telegraph said the manual appears to be an updated version of guidance published in 2021, and the front cover shows an emergency worker in a protective suit and helmet standing in front of a helicopter.