...This month, Russia’s wartime toll of dead and wounded reached a historic milestone.
According to the British Ministry of Defence, more than one million Russian troops have been killed or injured since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022.
The estimate aligns with a recent study by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which puts Russian military deaths at up to 250,000 and total casualties, including the wounded, at over 950,000. Ukraine has suffered very high losses as well, with between 60,000 and 100,000 personnel killed and total casualties reaching approximately 400,000.
While precise wartime casualty figures are notoriously difficult to verify, the independent Russian outlet Mediazona has identified the names of more than 111,000 Russian military personnel killed, using official records, social media obituaries, and images of tombstones. The outlet believes the true death toll is significantly higher.
These are staggering figures by any measure of comparison in modern Russian history.
In just over three years, Russian fatalities are estimated to be five times higher than the combined death toll from all Soviet and Russian wars between the end of the second world war and the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
The war in Ukraine has proved far deadlier for the Kremlin than other recent conflicts: Russia’s losses are roughly 15 times greater than those suffered during the Soviet Union’s decade-long war in Afghanistan, and 10 times higher than in Russia’s 13-year war in Chechnya.
And it’s not just the dead returning in caskets – soldiers with amputated limbs and serious injuries are also coming home, driving a sharp rise in the production of prosthetic limbs.
“We doubled the number of our clients one year into the conflict and since then it has been a steady 10% increase annually,” said Igor Vinogradov, the director of a mid-sized prosthetics and orthopaedics firm in northern Russia.
“By far, the majority are war veterans,” Vinogradov said, adding that his company relies on imported prosthetic arms and legs from Germany, as well as some homegrown technology.
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