The three-week war staged by Russia in Ukraine has cost it more troop casualties of 7,000—four of them generals—which outpaced the Americans lost in four other wars in the world. Ukraine lost 1,300 men but the UN said Ukraine had seen over 1,500 civilians lost in the fighting.
In the three weeks since Russia attacked Ukraine, 7,000 Russian troops have been killed in the battle, according to US intelligence estimates published by Business Insider. Four Russian generals have died and the Times reported on March 16 that between 14,000 and 21,000 Russians troops had been injured.
This figure outpaced those American casualties of other wars in the world namely: Iwo Jima in 1945 with 6,852; Iraq War in 2003 to 2011 with 4,825; Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2021 with 3,576 and Pearl Harbor in 1941 with 2,335.
The Insider said Russian troop deaths are already more than the number of American troops killed in either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. At this rate, Russia is suffering what could soon be unsustainable losses.
In the three weeks since Russia launched its war against Ukraine, the fighting has taken a heavy toll on both sides and the civilians trapped in cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol, where authorities are trying to rescue 1,300 people who had sheltered in a theater that was attacked.
The toll also appears to be huge and mounting for Russia's military.
Seven thousand Russian troops have been killed in battle so far, according to a US intelligence estimate reported by the New York Times, and that's a conservative estimate.
The Russian casualties appear to be of a scale similar to those at Iwo Jima — one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history – where about 6,852 US troops died and around 19,000 were injured in five weeks of fighting against an entrenched Japanese force, which sustained an estimated 18,000 dead and missing.
If Russian forces were to continue losing troops at this rate, in a year about 121,000 Russian troops would be dead, with injured likely to be three or four times higher — suggesting Russia's offensive must break the Ukrainian resistance or suffer unsustainable losses. That toll, for example, would be higher than American casualties during the Korean War, where 36,576 Americans died over the course of three years.
Ukraine's military has also suffered heavy losses, likely to be much higher than the 1,300 troops Ukraine has confirmed as killed.
Ukrainian Presidential Press Office and posted on Facebook early Saturday, March 12, 2022 said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke about the 1,300 Ukrainian military casualties from Kyiv.
Zelenskyy's statement on Saturday was the first time Ukraine has quantified the nation's military casualties.
The United Nations also said Saturday Ukraine has seen 1,581 civilian casualties, with 579 dead and 1,002 injured.
Zelenskyy released the figure during a press briefing, marking the first time Ukraine's government has released an estimate of the nation's military casualties, according to The New York Times. Zelenskyy called Russia's invasion "a war of annihilation."
"Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes," the UN said.
The UN reported that those figures were just preliminary and "the actual figures are considerably higher."
It's less clear how many casualties Russia has suffered as part of its invasion. Ukrainian authorities said this week that more than 12,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, though Russia has pegged the figure at just under 500, The Washington Post reported.
Russia has also disputed the number of Ukrainian military casualties, saying 2,870 Ukrainian troops have been killed according to the Russian state media outlet Tass. As Insider's Julie Coleman previously reported, US officials have urged extreme skepticism towards Russia's casualty figures, and warned about the difficulty in independently verifying both military and civilian casualties in active war zones.
Tags: #Russia-Ukrainewar, #trooplossessurpassedUStrooplosses, #USintelligencereport, #geopolitics