May was a ‘meat grinder’ for Russian soldiers in Ukrainewhere – according to US, British and other Western intelligence agencies – there have been a average of over 1000 soldiers wounded or killed every day. But as the New York Times reports, citing U.S. officials, despite the losses, Moscow is recruiting 25,000 to 30,000 new soldiers a month—about as many as are leaving the battlefield. That has allowed its army to continue sending waves of troops against Ukrainian defenses, hoping to overwhelm them and break through the trenches.
It’s a style of warfare that Russian soldiers have likened to being put through a meat grinder, with commanding officers seemingly unaware that they are sending infantry soldiers to their deaths.
At times, this approach has proven effective, leading to the Russian army to victories such as those at Avdiivka and Bakhmutin eastern Ukraine. But Ukrainian and Western officials say the tactics were less successful this spring, as Russia sought to gain ground near the city of Kharkiv. U.S. officials say Russia has achieved a key goal of President Vladimir Putin, creating a buffer zone along the border to make it harder for Ukrainians to enter the country. Mthe attack did not threaten Kharkiv and was eventually stopped by Ukrainian defenses.
“President Putin and Moscow really tried to make great progress, to break through the front lines this spring,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, in an interview with the New York Times. “They tried and failed. They made little progress and are paying a very high price.”
Russian casualties increased at other times, especially during the assaults on Avdiivka and Bakhmut. But the assaults on those cities were spread out over several months. The May push, both out of Kharkiv and along the Eastern Front, involved more intense periods of wave-long Russian attacks. British military intelligence analysts said Russian casualties in May, estimated at an average of 1,200 a day, were the highest of the war.
Last month’s clashes decimated the city of Vovchanskabout 40 miles from Kharkiv, where Ukrainians and Russians are engaged in a bitter battle for control. Russian soldiers said on Telegram that their units are suffering high casualties. Some say their ranks are being decimated by drones, machine guns and artillery barrages.
The casualties forced Russia to send new recruits to Ukraine relatively quickly, which means that the soldiers sent to the front are poorly trained. Ubiquitous drones have also made it easy for both sides to spot and target enemy forces. And landmines and cluster munitions make movement across open terrain a near-suicidal undertaking.
Since Putin launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, at least 350,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III recently said. Land British estimates put the number of Russians killed or wounded at more than 500,000.
U.S. estimates of war casualties are based on satellite imagery, communications intercepts, social media, and journalists’ dispatches, as well as official accounts from Russia and Ukraine. But those estimates vary, even within the U.S. government.
Reliable estimates of Ukraine’s casualties are harder to come by. Ukrainian officials guard these numbers closely. Several U.S. officials insist they don’t have an accurate count. Zelensky has said that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the first two years of the war, but U.S. officials say that number appears to understate Ukraine’s losses.
