Heavy losses keep Russia from reaching target, US officials say

WASHINGTON — The staggeringly high number of Russian casualties in Ukraine means President Vladimir V. Putin may not be able to achieve one of his major war targets: the entire eastern region of the country this year, Biden administration officials say and military experts. say.

With 500 Russian soldiers killed or wounded each day, according to the latest estimate by US intelligence and military officials, the Russian war effort has slowed to a lingering spurt, officials said.

Russia’s ice pace in the east has been further hampered by the advent of US multi-launch missile systems, which allowed Ukrainian forces to take back some territory and made it more difficult for Russian soldiers to reach other areas.

Earlier this summer, Russian troops captured the Luhansk region of Ukraine, the easternmost part of the country. But in neighboring Donetsk, their progress has stalled, not least because of heavy casualties, US military officials said.

“I think it’s safe to suggest that the Russians probably took 70 or 80,000 casualties in less than six months,” Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday, citing deaths and injuries. .

“They have made some incremental gains in the east, although not very much in recent weeks, but that has come at an extraordinary cost to the Russian military because of the good performance of the Ukrainian military and all the aid that the Ukrainian military has received. got.”

Two US officials said the estimate of Russia’s losses included about 20,000 dead. Of that number, 5,000 would be mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a private force with ties to Putin, and foreign fighters, said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss sensitive military matters. reviews.

US officials say their estimates of the number of victims are based on satellite images, intercepted communications, social media and media reports at the scene.

The Russian government classifies the killing of troops as state secrets, and the country’s war dead are rarely reported on state television. Russia last released an official figure in March, when it said 1,351 Russian soldiers had died in the war. At the time, US officials estimated that the number was closer to 5,000.

Ukraine has also suffered heavy losses, officials say. The Ukrainian government is reluctant to release figures but has said 100 to 200 of its troops were killed each day.

Because Ukraine has been at war with Russian separatists for nearly a decade, it has a large pool of seasoned veterans available to fight. Still, US officials say the conflict has become the bloodiest land war in Europe since World War II.

But for Russia, the high casualty rate meant slower progress. The result, Mr Kahl said, is that “conditions in the east have essentially stabilized” and Russia has been forced to redeploy its forces to the south as Ukraine intensifies a campaign to retake territory there.

Mr Putin has also expanded his ranks to include former soldiers. But the effectiveness of the battlefield arrivals is “very poor,” a senior defense official told reporters last month.

“The Russian military is deeply depleted,” said Seth G. Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “That affects their ability to fight an effective ground campaign in Ukraine.”

While the Russian military is suffering heavy casualties, US and European officials said, it is struggling to get reservists and new recruits into the battle.

Russia has already committed nearly 85 percent of its field army to the war, drawing on troops from the country’s Far East and deploying around the world, defense officials say. Before the Russian army invaded Ukraine in February, it had about 900,000 on active duty.

“The Russians probably don’t have enough effective forces to completely take Donetsk,” Jones said in an interview.

Moscow has also recruited Chechen troops and fighters from Syria, whose president is linked to Mr Putin. By relying on these fighters, officials said, Mr Putin has avoided a domestic outcry over casualties and the need, so far, to call for a general mobilization akin to conscription.

“They’ve raised the recruiting age in Russia and done other things to sweeten the pot” for volunteers, said Evelyn Farkas, the director of the McCain Institute and a senior Pentagon official for Ukraine in the Obama administration. “They attract people from all over.”

But Ms Farkas added: “Unless they have a mass mobilization, which I don’t see they can do politically at the moment, they will be at a loss.”

After the capture of Luhansk, Russia said it was pausing the campaign in the east to regroup and rearm. But it continued to shell towns and villages in the region and its troops continued to fight. Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops went on the offensive in cities in Donetsk, taking back patches of land there.

As fighting intensified in southern Ukraine, a series of explosions on Tuesday shook a Russian air base in Crimea, a peninsula in the south that Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Satellite images show at least eight destroyed fighter jets at the explosion site.

Ukraine has not officially claimed responsibility for the explosions, but a senior Ukrainian military official said the country’s special forces and local partisan resistance fighters loyal to the government were behind the attack.

With Ukraine on the offensive to reclaim territory in the south, officials say Mr Putin may need to move more troops there.

According to retired General Philip M. Breedlove, who was NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe when Russia annexed Crimea, the Russian military has in some cases tried to force captured Ukrainians to fight.

“They have a huge problem with manpower and an even bigger problem that the manpower they have is not properly trained,” General Breedlove said in an interview. “Their best units are already bloodied.”

Pentagon officials say it becomes increasingly difficult for Russian units to continue when they inflict high casualties.