Holding a speech in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, the President of the russian federation, inadvertently disclosed the total casualties of the russian army invading Ukraine.
During his yearly press conference, Putin announced the total numbers of mobilized military personnel, so-called "volunteers," as well as those currently involved in active war operations. These figures reveal that despite previous estimates of around 300,000 russian soldiers killed in combat, the actual death toll reaches half a million, at least.
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The reason for the difference in numbers is that the media analysts did not take into account the russian forces at the start of the invasion and before the partial mobilization was initiated in russia in the fall of 2022. Hereafter Defense Express provides revised calculations.
First of all, 300,000 russians were called up for partial mobilization, of which, according to Putin, 244,000 are still fighting. There were no demobilization orders, hence all 56,000 lost in combat as killed or injured.
The russian president says 41,000 of them "returned home." He doesn't specify though if they returned alive or not, nor does he elaborate what happened to the other 15,000 military servicemen.
As early as 2023, some 486,000 new recruits joined the russian army under contract, according to the disclosed figures. Thus, a total of 786,000 mobilized and contracted personnel were enlisted. At the same time, the declared total number of russian forces "in the zone of hostilities against Ukraine" was announced as 617,000, revealing a discrepancy in calculations amounting to 169,000 personnel only in these two categories.
That is to say, apart from contractors and mobilized, we should also add the category comprising soldiers gathered for a fight against Ukraine prior to the invasion and, accordingly, the start of mobilization. Those, who engaged in combat throughout February–September 2022.
The Ukrainian side assessed the russians had a 330,000-man force as of June 2022, as noted by Oleksii Hromov, Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of General Staff of Armed Forces of Ukraine.
To add on, by that time 30,000 russian personnel had already been killed in action since February, according to official reports of the Ukrainian General Staff.
To summarize, there were approximately 360,000 russian troops before Kremlin issued the "partial mobilization," plus 300,000 mobilized afterward, and 486,000 contractors. About 1,128,000 soldiers in total, with 617,000 of them still fighting at this point in time. Consequently, 511,000 are "no longer fighting" for various reasons. That makes over half a million military personnel lost or incapable of participating in military operations and sent home with injuries.
That is just the official data that tends to be strict and cautious in estimates. The real number could be much higher.
Additionally, there is the issue with the "Wagner PMC" mercenaries. Now deceased chief of the private military company, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, over 20,000 "wagnerites" were lost in battles against the Armed Forces of Ukraine, coinciding with the recent assessment by the UK Defence Intelligence.
Another vague topic is the russian-controlled mobilized personnel from the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, with forced conscription raging exceptionally in spring and summer of 2022.
Ukraine's General Staff official Hromov mentioned that out of 330,000 active military servicemen of russian invasion forces, only 220,000 people were from the russian army itself, meaning that the other 110,000 were mobilized from occupied Ukrainian territories.
Moreover, there are many visually confirmed instances of russians leaving the bodies of comrades in the "gray zone" and even in their own trenches. Whether those were included in the calculations is an open question since those are very unlikely to be actually counted as lost in battle for as long as they "keep serving," they get payment which ends up safely in the pocket of their commanders.
This also explains why the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, despite Putin's statements of 617,000 russian invaders fighting in Ukraine, still believes the real number of the russian manpower is 443,000 troops. Therefore, the half-million death toll on the russian army is the conservative minimum.
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