Russian military casualties in Ukraine at the highest rate since the start of the war

Russian military losses in Ukraine in February they suffered their highest one-month losses since Russia’s large-scale invasion of its neighbor more than two years ago, according to the latest estimates.

Last month Russia finally captured Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine after several weeks of bloody urban fighting, while other advances on the eastern and southern fronts also sought to capitalize on the failure of Ukrainian forces to make significant progress in the offensive in late 2023.

It is estimated that Russian forces suffered an average of 983 battlefield casualties per day in Ukraine throughout February, or more than 28,000 during the month.

A battlefield casualty refers to personnel who are either killed or wounded in operations, and thus removed from the front line. A rough analogy in modern warfare suggests that for every soldier killed in battle, there are an additional two to three wounded.

Using this ratio, as many as 10,000 Russian military personnel could have been killed in Ukraine in February.

Russian tactics seem to favor heavy artillery and long-range fire support to soften up a target area, which is then attacked using infantry. Estimates of Russian casualties in February are about double the monthly average, which is about 14,000 per month.

Russia-Ukraine military casualties mount as fighting continues

By the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, Russian military casualties have reached an estimated 350,000.

However, Russia retains the ability to replace battlefield losses in personnel and materiel, with partial mobilization campaigns implemented by Moscow to attract new recruits to fill gaps created as units rebuild after their time in the first line.

In February 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 31,000 Ukrainian military personnel had been killed during the war.

Since the capture of Avdiivka in February, Russian forces have pushed westward beyond Marinka while maintaining further offensives in eastern and southern Ukraine. However, the average number of weekly attacks has dropped by 13% since mid-February, when the weekly average reached 600.

In addition, in much of occupied Ukraine, polling stations opened early for Russia’s presidential election, the outcome of which will see President Vladimir Putin win another term.

The occupied territories of Ukraine were annexed by Russia in 2023, a decision not recognized by the Western World. However, Russia insists on a process of Russification of the confiscated Ukrainian populations, which amount to about 2.6 million people or 6% of the country’s pre-war population.

Russia achieves 80% success rate in countering Ukrainian drone threats

Meanwhile, the development of military operations in Ukraine has seen a rapid evolution in combat tactics and technology, despite the prevailing World War I-style human wave attacks by much of the Russian military.

Chief among the developments has been the use of small one-way attack drones, essentially small commercial drones equipped with an explosive device, as a capability used to track and target infantry and armored vehicles caught in the open. Social media channels are filled with examples from both sides of commercial-grade one-way attack munitions, using so-called first-person-view drones (FPVs), hitting military targets.

Ukraine is known to be developing a significant stockpile of such munitions, with the UK also recently announcing it would help supply 10,000 drones to Kiev, including 1,000 FPV “attack drones”, the UK government said on 7 March.

However, Russia is considered to have a sophisticated electronic warfare (EW) capability at the tactical and strategic level and is able, to some extent, to counter the use of FPV attack drones.

Speaking during a recent discussion at the Center for Security and International Studies, the Chief of the British Army General Staff, General Patrick Saunders, said that Russian successes in using EW capabilities to counter Ukrainian drones were “during a period, recently” to around 80%.

Sanders attributed this to the current state of the battlefield’s “highly contested electromagnetic spectrum” and Russia’s “effective use” of EW capabilities.

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