The war in Ukraine is claiming a dramatic number of victims – on both sides. The Kremlin is keeping quiet about its own casualties in the “special military operation,” as the war is called in official Russian language.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, on the other hand, publishes daily figures on Russia's losses. The figures come from Ukrainian authorities. They cannot currently be independently verified. The Russian military's losses of vehicles, aircraft and equipment in the war against Ukraine are also high. The country is paying a very high price for marginal gains. The number of wounded Russian soldiers has now exceeded 350,000, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels on March 14, 2024. This corresponds to 87 percent of the total number of armed forces before the war, he added. In December 2023, the U.S. secret service put the number of injured or killed soldiers at around 315,000. This was reported from parliamentary circles in Washington, citing documents.