Statistics corroborated from multiple sources highlight the costly manner in which Russia is waging war, as well as the bloody impact of the drone war that Ukrainian forces are waging against the Russians, reports Politico.
Russia has lost 281,550 soldiers in the first eight months of this year, according to a document obtained by Ukrainian intelligence services and made public on October 6.
This shows a high rate of losses, against modest territorial gains. According to the leaked statistics, during the mentioned period 86,744 Russians were killed, 33,966 are missing, 158,529 were injured, and 2,311 captured.
The Russian portal Mediazona, which together with the BBC, runs a project to identify Russian soldiers killed in action (confirming the death of over 134,000 soldiers since the war began) has expressed skepticism about at least some of the figures.
Thus, Mediazona objected to a number considered overestimated in the leaked document: the over 5000 Russians who would have been killed on the front along the Dnieper River. According to the Ukrainian army, some of those forces were redistributed in eastern Ukraine, where they had the bloodiest battles of this year.
In addition, the open-source analysis group Frontelligence Insight explained to POLITICO that the document obtained by Ukrainian espionage contains data close to reality and corresponds to their own estimates.
Details, HERE