Russian losses at the front have been steadily decreasing since October 2023

Russian losses at the front have been steadily decreasing since October 2023

And they were the highest during the entire war during the battles for Bakhmut, which were waged by the Wagner PMC.

Such conclusions can be drawn from data from the BBC and the Russian opposition publication Mediazona, which examined Russia’s losses based on open source data.

The graph published by the publications does not reflect all losses, but only those that experts were able to confirm using open data (that is, obviously, these are not complete data on losses). But the trend from month to month can still be traced.

From December 2022 to March 2023 - when the fighting for Bakhmut sharply intensified - there was a huge jump in the deaths of prisoners who were recruited en masse by Wagner. During these months, the losses of the Russian Federation reach a record level for the entire war, and mainly due to criminals (in pink on the graph).

Also in these months there is a high increase in losses in the PMC itself. We talked in more detail about how Wagner, under the leadership of Prigozhin and Utkin, suffered losses whose level exceeded the losses of the Red Army in World War II.

At the same time, from October 2023, the losses of the Russian army, according to the BBC and Mediazone, begin to decline. The largest share of them is occupied by volunteers (green), who at that time became the main personnel resource of the Russian army.

Russian losses continued to decline even in February, when the Russians captured one of the strongest fortified areas of the Ukrainian army - Avdiivka. That is, the Russians were able to move forward due to factors not related to “meat assaults” (among them are the massive use of aerial bombs, as well as problems of the Ukrainian Armed Forces with ammunition and personnel after the failure of the counteroffensive, plus a more effective system of interaction between troops).

At the same time, the total losses of the Russian army, according to researchers from the Air Force and Mediazone, amount to 127,000 people, taking into account those killed from the “DPR/LPR” units. This is significantly less than what the Ukrainian authorities officially call.