More than 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday.
Ukrainian drone strikes have taken out large amounts of Russian supplies as well, the official added, speaking on background. Hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition have been destroyed in Russian and North Korean weapons stockpiles in Russia.
The attacks have made a “serious dent” in Russian supply lines, the official said, adding that Russia would likely need to move munitions dumps farther from the front lines, thereby slowing deliveries to the front.
Russia has also lost more than two-thirds of its tanks, and has begun drawing on Soviet-era stocks that date back to World War II, the official said.
Russian forces sustained their highest month-on-month losses of the war in September, said a senior military official, who cited a Russian push toward Pokrovsk as a leading factor in the high casualty rate.
Russia has been making gains near Pokrovsk thanks to a grinding offensive that has seen its forces inch forward as Ukrainian troops are constrained by ammunition shortages, deal with flagging morale, and struggled to recruit soldiers.
Moscow’s losses could eventually influence Putin’s calculus on continuing the war as he seeks to balance his foreign and domestic goals, said the senior government official.
“Putin is trying to avoid a mass mobilization because of the effect that would have on Russia’s domestic population,” the official said.
“At this point, he has been able to significantly increase the pay of these voluntary soldiers, and he has been able to continue to field those forces without doing a major mobilization. And I think we’re just watching very closely how long that stance can actually be one that he can maintain.”
It’s a proposition that bears similarity to a victory plan proposed by Estonia in December 2023, which sought to increase weapons transfers to Ukraine and training for its troops in order to exhaust Russian forces and force Putin to either make unpopular mobilization choices or make peace.
Russia performed partial mobilization in September and October 2022. At the time, tens of thousands of Russian men left for neighboring countries to avoid the draft.
Moscow is now meeting its need for soldiers by offering lucrative contracts that push soldiers’ pay far past the average for Russian citizens. Russia has also decreased its standards for soldiers in order to avoid mobilization, leading to greater reported crimes and discipline problems within its army.
Putin’s decision to only partly mobilize troops so far is evidence that he sees political risks in expanding recruiting, said John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
“This is a potential point of vulnerability for the regime,” Herbst said. “The Russian people are not in this war. They’re not marching towards the sound of the drums.”
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