New American intelligence has revealed Putin’s huge losses

Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian Armed Forces to invade Ukraine believing they would capture Kyiv within a matter of days. However, that’s not how the war unfolded. Ukraine stopped Moscow and the ongoing fighting has hurt Russia badly. 

Neither Ukraine nor Russia provide statistics for their casualties in the war but there have been a number of estimates regarding the total losses for both countries. Numbers from Ukriane’s General Staff on Russian losses have been quite high. 

For example, as of December 13th Russia’s total manpower losses since the conflict began reached a staggering 341,500 personnel eliminated. While that number may appear far too true, it might not be that wrong based on U.S. intelligence. 

Newly declassified intelligence reported on by a variety of international news outlets has revealed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has cost Moscow at least 315,000 ever since the first soldiers crossed the border into Ukraine in February 2022. 

Such a large number of killed and wounded represents about 87% of Moscow’s original 360,000-strong invasion force, a number that is a significant blow to the Kremlin and its military apparatus if the estimates from U.S. intelligence prove true. 

However, it isn’t just massive troop losses that Moscow has suffered since launching its invasion of Ukraine. Russia has also had a large majority of its pre-war equipment and military vehicle stockpile knocked out over the last year and ten months.  

“As of late November, Russia lost over a quarter of its pre-invasion stockpiles of ground forces equipment,” the assessment was quoted as reading according to CNN, which noted that much of the Russian equipment being used was from older stockpiles. 

“This has reduced the complexity and scale of Russian offensive operations, which have failed to make major gains in Ukraine since early 2022,” the report continued. But just how bad have Russian equipment losses been according to U.S. intelligence?

The Wall Street Journal noted that the intelligence report noted Russia has likely lost nearly two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks, having had 2200 destroyed out of about 3500 it had prepared before Russian troops attacked Ukraine. 

This number matches up well with the numbers from the Dutch open-source intelligence firm Oryx, which has been documenting both Moscow and Kyiv’s military equipment and vehicle losses through verifiable photo and video evidence. 

Oryx recorded Russia’s total verifiable tank losses to be 2,541 as of December 13th, of which 1,665 had been destroyed, 141 damaged, 188 abandoned, and 547 captured by Ukrainian forces throughout the previous nearly two years of war. 

The U.S. intelligence report also noted that Russia had lost 4,400 of the 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles that it started with at the beginning of the war, which would represent a stunning 32% loss rate for the Russian Armed Forces. 

Oryx has also recorded numbers that aren’t too far off from what was being estimated by U.S. intelligence. The Dutch firm reported Moscow had lost a total of 3144 verifiable infantry fighting vehicles, 2,203 of which have been destroyed. 

"The scale of losses has forced Russia to take extraordinary measures to sustain its ability to fight. Russia declared a partial mobilization of 300,000 personnel in late 2022,”  the assessment explained, according to the source quoted by Reuters. 

The source also noted that the American intelligence assessment pointed out Russia’s losses have forced the Kremlin to relax its normal recruiting standards and allow convicts and older civilians into the country’s military ranks. 

The Wall Street Journal's Warren Strobel wrote that it has widely assumed Moscow has lost a significant number of troops and material in Ukraine, but this new information from the United States provides new details on the extent of Russia’s setbacks.