Moscow’s forces have suffered their highest daily losses of the year, according to Kyiv’s latest estimate, as Russian bloggers count the personnel cost of the battle of Avdiivka.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Monday that, over the previous 24 hours, Russia had lost 1,240 troops, taking the total since the start of its full-scale invasion to 403,720. Monday’s figure is the highest since December 13, 2023 when Ukraine said Russia had losses of 1,300 and not far short of the biggest daily toll of the war recorded on October 19 2023, which was 1,380.
The Russian defense ministry said on Sunday that parts of the Russian Central Grouping of Forces had completely captured Avdiivka in what is Russia’s biggest gain since it captured the city of Bakhmut in May 2023. Ukraine said it had withdrawn its soldiers to save them from being fully surrounded.
Ukraine does not release its casualty numbers and its estimate of Russian losses vary from other tallies. Senior U.S. defense officials said on February 16 that about 315,000 Russian troops had either been killed or injured. Newsweek has been unable as yet to verify these figures and has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment on Monday’s figures from Ukraine’s General Staff.
Meanwhile, open-source research, independent Russian media outlet Mediazona, along with BBC Russia, confirmed on February 15 the names of 44,654 Russian soldiers who had been killed in the war.
The figures draw on publicly available information such as obituaries, posts by relatives, news in regional media, and reports by local authorities. The outlets say the real number is significantly higher. Its latest number was 1,194 more than its last update at the start of February and included an additional 15 military personnel with ranks from lieutenant colonel and higher.
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Kremlin milbloggers have posted about huge losses in its push for the key city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region.
“Z-Russians on Telegram are now talking about their losses in the Battle of Avdiivka,” posted Ukrainian journalist Ilia Ponomarenko on X, formerly Twitter. “Allegedly, it’s 16,000 men as ‘irreplaceable losses’ (e.g., all fatalities + all severely wounded that will never be back to ranks again).
“If that’s true…it means that over the four months of the Avdiivka campaign between mid-October and mid-February, the Russian fatalities rate surpassed the official death toll of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989), which stands at 15,000,” Ponomarenko wrote.
Ukrainian General Oleksandr Tarnavsky has said that, since January 1, Moscow had lost over 20,000 troops, 199 tanks, and 481 armored fighting vehicles. Newsweek has yet to verify these figures. Ukraine’s National Resistance Center reported that, due to high casualties in the town, Russians are placing the bodies of soldiers in abandoned schools.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.