Scholz remark: Putin allegedly loses 24,000 Russian troops monthly.
The exact number of Russian soldiers killed and wounded in Ukraine remains unknown. There have been numerous estimates, but few official records exist. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of sending a massive number of his own soldiers to their deaths in the conflict with Ukraine. "There's a figure out there that says 24,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or severely injured each month," Scholz said during a public conversation. "All for an imperialistic megalomania of the Russian president," he later added.
Putin views both Ukraine and Belarus as parts of Russia, breaking a long-standing principle of not changing borders. He's also responsible for the deaths of numerous Ukrainian civilians and soldiers.
Both Ukraine and Russia rarely, if ever, provide official updates on their own casualties. Conversely, the numbers of casualties on the opposing side are sometimes inflated. In February, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first revealed 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed. He dismissed higher figures from Russia and the United States.
In Moscow, there are no official announcements regarding casualties among their soldiers. Instead, it seems certain information is being deliberately suppressed. Take, for instance, the case of Russian military blogger Andrei Morosov. It's believed he committed suicide in February, after he was allegedly pressured by the Russian military command to remove his reports on casualty figures. Before his death, Morosov shared a farewell message on his Telegram channel where he mentioned a demand to delete his report. In that report, he cited 16,000 Russian soldiers killed in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka.
In March, during the battle for the city of Bachmut, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, revealed a five-digit number of casualties on the Russian side. A few months earlier, the British intelligence service had estimated the number of slain Wagner mercenaries at 20,000. Prigoshin's claim confirmed that figure.
The tallies from Western observers also vary. In mid-March, NATO estimated 350,000 Russian casualties - both killed and injured. The US intelligence service gave a similar count of 315,000 in December 2023. The Russian media company Mediazona doesn't attempt to estimate the number of casualties but does document the number of killed Russian soldiers using publicly available data and sources. By mid-February, the outlet had uncovered 45,000 killed Russian soldiers. For the conflict in Avdiivka, these figures add up to 6,600 confirmed Russian soldier deaths.
Recently, Russia's new Defense Minister, Andrei Belousov, made headlines. He did not provide specific casualty numbers for Russian soldiers but expressed his intent to significantly reduce the number of casualties. This suggests that the Russian casualties have been high.
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Source: www.ntv.de
