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Russia unaware of Ukraine war death toll due to military’s ‘culture of dishonest reporting’: UK intelligence
- Russia has likely seen up to 350,000 casualties since its invasion of Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) said
- But that is an estimate, and Russia probably doesn’t even know the real figure, because it has ‘a long-established culture of dishonest reporting’ the MOD said
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Russian officials likely don’t know how many of their own soldiers have been killed or injured since the invasion of Ukraine because Russia’s military has a history of dishonesty in reporting those figures, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.
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The UK MOD said in an intelligence update on Monday that Russia has likely seen up to 350,000 casualties since it launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
But it gave the number as an estimate, as there is no confirmed accurate measure for Russian losses.
Even among Russian officials there is likely a low level of understanding about total casualty figures because of a long-established culture of dishonest reporting within the military
Russia likely doesn’t have an accurate count itself, the MOD said.
“Even among Russian officials there is likely a low level of understanding about total casualty figures because of a long-established culture of dishonest reporting within the military,” it said.
The UK ministry broke down Russian casualties into likely numbers of injured and killed between the traditional military and soldiers with the Wagner Group, a mercenary force that played a key role earlier in the war and experienced huge losses.
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Russia’s traditional military has likely experienced between 180,000 and 240,000 personnel wounded and about 50,000 killed, the UK MOD said, while the Wagner Group has seen about 40,000 wounded and 20,000 killed, it added.
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