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The Russian Army has lost 450,000 soldiers and 3,000 tanks during the two year war in Ukraine, according to figures released by the British government.
The staggering casualty figures mean that President Vladimir Putin has lost an average of 560 troops a day since Russia’s special military operation began two years ago.
The losses are 100,000 more than the previous UK estimate shared in February by Britain’s Defence Intelligence and equate to Russia losing 1,300 troops a day in just the last two months.
The casualty figures do not include mercenary groups like Wagner who lost thousands of fighters in “human wave” assaults in the battle of Bakhmut last year.
In December the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said 20,000 of Wagner’s soldiers had been killed and another 40,000 had been injured in a single month.
The latest figures also do not account for the “tens of thousands” of soldiers who have deserted Putin’s armed forces, according to the MoD,
British Armed Forces Minister Leo Doherty also estimates Moscow has lost almost 3,000 tanks – up from 2,000 a year ago.
It emerged in February that the Russian Army had lost almost all of his valuable tank force since invading Ukraine.
At the time, intelligence chiefs said that Russia had been forced to turn to mothballed and rusting weapons from the Cold War after losing almost 3,000 tanks.
Details of the latest losses were released to the House of Commons in answer to a parliamentary question.
Former Scots Guards officer Doherty said of the latest intelligence estimate: “We estimate that approximately 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded, and tens of thousands more have already deserted since the start of the conflict.”
He added: “The number of personnel killed serving in Russian private military companies is not clear.
“We also estimate that over 10,000 Russian armoured vehicles, including nearly 3,000 main battle tanks, 109 fixed wing aircraft, 136 helicopters, 346 unmanned aerial vehicles, 23 naval vessels of all classes, and over 1,500 artillery systems of all types have been destroyed, abandoned, or captured by Ukraine since the start of the conflict.”
Death tolls are closely guarded secrets and notoriously hard to track because both sides have an incentive to play down their own losses and exaggerate their enemy’s toll.
The latest UK estimate is broadly inline with Kyiv’s claims that Russia has lost 470,000 troops since the start of the full scale invasion on Feb 24 2022.
Previously UK officials have said Russia’s dead to wounded ratio was roughly one to four, which suggests at least 90,000 Russian soldiers have died.
A joint investigation by the BBC and independent Mediazona found at least 50,000 Russian soldiers had died.
The latest UK figures that Russia has lost almost 3,000 tanks chimes exactly with the Oryx blog that tracks visually confirmed losses.
The blog states that Russia has lost 2,936 tanks of which 1,960 were destroyed, 514 were captured, 308 were abandoned and 154 were damaged.
The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said Russia had “lost more than 3,000 main battle tanks” in February.
The IISS said: “Its full-scale invasion has cost Russia more than 3,000 main battle tanks, roughly as many as the Kremlin had in its active inventory before February 2022.
“Russia has been drawing on stored equipment to replenish losses.”
Ukraine’s President Zelensky said in February that 31,000 of his soldiers had died – but western officials have hinted the true toll is much higher.
The US-based New York Times claimed 70,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed by last summer, citing US officials.
