Officials at the Pentagon have said that losing just 10 per cent of a military force to injuries and death renders a single unit almost useless in terms of combat.
Casualty estimates are ‘highly speculative’
Casualty estimates for militaries on both sides in Ukraine are highly speculative, however, US officials have warned.
They often give ranges rather than specific numbers, though just last week, the CIA director estimated that 60,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or injured. Some estimates have gone as high as 80,000 casualties.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, claimed on Tuesday that 40,000 Russians have been killed so far in the war, with tens of thousands more injured.
Russian Ukrainian officials stopped reporting their official casualties early on in the war, with both sides seeking to guard their true death toll in an effort to keep up morale.
Russia’s last reported death toll, at the end of March, stood at just 1,351 people.
Russian journalists have verified the deaths of at least 4,760 soldiers by mid-July.
