Vladimir Putin has lost two-thirds of the troops he had prior to the Ukraine war, Kyiv’s latest military figures suggest, as the Russian leader’s manpower shortage deepens with Ukraine’s relentless incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
The figures were provided by the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, which posts estimates of Russia’s troop and equipment losses daily. Its latest update said Russia lost 1,120 soldiers over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 600,470.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia releases detailed or regular casualty numbers, but Kyiv’s figures usually exceed those of its Western allies. Newsweek has not independently verified these figures and has contacted Russia’s Defense Ministry for comment by email.
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Prior to Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian Armed Forces had some 900,000 troops. Putin has added more troops to his army since, signing a decree in August 2022 to enlist 137,000 more troops, and 170,000 more in December 2023.
Moscow rarely shares information on the number of casualties it has sustained in the war, but in a rare statement on losses in the conflict, Putin said at a press conference in June that the ratio of “irretrievable losses” between Russia and Ukraine was one to five in favor of Moscow. He didn’t elaborate on the exact figures.
Russia’s manpower shortage is reported to be worsening amid a cross-border raid launched by Kyiv on August 6 in Russia’s Kursk region, which appears to have caught Moscow off guard.
Kremlin officials are now mulling a fresh mobilization before the end of the year to make up for growing losses, Bloomberg reported on August 13, citing three unnamed sources.
Despite more attractive recruitment bonuses being floated by the Kremlin in recent months, regional Russian officials are on average failing to meet more than a third of their recruitment quotas, one source told the publication.
Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of the population in the fall of 2022 targeting 300,000 recruits, but has since pushed back against pressure to take a more aggressive approach and introduce a full-scale mobilization in the country to bolster its manpower.
Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born political economist from the University of Chicago, previously told Newsweek that Putin is likely deterred from announcing an open mass mobilization because the propaganda narrative that he is pushing is that Russia is not waging a war but is conducting a limited-scale military operation.
In June, prior to the Kursk incursion, Putin reiterated that he doesn’t intend to announce a new mobilization, telling the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that there was “no need” to take such a measure.
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