“The Russians are taking a tremendous number of casualties,” Colin Kahl, the Pentagon's Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, told reporters.
He added: “There’s a lot of fog in war but I think it’s safe to suggest that the Russians have probably taken 70,000 or 80,000 casualties in the less than six months. Now, that is a combination of killed in action and wounded in action and that number might be a little lower, a little higher, but I think that’s kind of in the ballpark."
Abandoned corpses of Russian soldiers in Vilkkhivka, near Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, seen on Monday, May 9, 2022. Photo: PAP/Abaca/Diego Herrera Carcedo
CIA Director William Burns last month estimated that Russian casualties in Ukraine "would be something in the vicinity of 15,000 killed and maybe three times that wounded."
According to the Ukrainian military, around 42,340 Russian soldiers have been killed since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in late February, the ukrinform.net website reported on Monday.