Putin gives first official idea of Russian losses since start of SMO, + more from the SPIEF

Yesterday at the official SPIEF (St. Petersburg International Economic Forum) Putin gave an extremely revealing 3-hour long open round table with foreign journalists. I will do a break down of some of the most interesting clips and soundbites, though you can see the entire important meeting here.

But first let’s cover the most interesting of the revelations:

The Russian MOD stopped listing official losses sometime around May of 2022, likely after it became obvious that the conflict would drag on and the losses would grow to an unsuitably painful degree.

Now at the SPIEF, Putin gave the first indication since that time of Russian losses when he stated that Russia loses 1 soldier for every 5 Ukrainian ones, as well as giving an exact figure for POWs, which he states as follows:

There are 1,348 #Russian soldiers and officers in captivity in #Ukraine, and 6,465 such #Ukrainian in #Russia, #Putin said.

There is a lot to digest and unpack here, so let’s do it one thing at a time.

Let’s first spell out exactly what he says:

• Ukraine loses 50,000 men per month, both irrecoverable and sanitary losses, i.e. total casualties included wounded, KIA, etc.

• The ratio of their wounded to irrecoverable/KIA is 50/50, which means out of 50k, 25k of them are actually irrecoverable losses. (note: this is a high proportion to wounded because of Ukraine’s comparative lack of battlefield medicine which causes far more wounded to die, not to mention Russia’s usage of powerful airstrikes/bombs which proportionally simply kills far more soldiers outright)

• Ukraine mobilizes 30,000 new men per month from the street.

• The ratio between Russian and Ukrainian losses is 1:5 in favor of Russia.

• The ratio of POWs is 1,348 to 6,465 in favor of Russia.

Now, let’s begin breaking this down:

The Russian MOD’s official tally of total Ukrainian losses is about 500,000 as of the last reporting a bit over a month ago:

Thus, given that the 500k figure is an official Russian MOD figure which Putin presumably would not contradict, we can only assume that Russian losses are therefore 1/5 of that, which would be ~100k.

Recall that MediaZona/BBC have the supposedly confirmed Russian names of what is now ~54,000 KIA. They claim this is only Russian troops and does not count DPR/LPR, which they claim is a further ~23k or so dead. They further extrapolate their confirmed name count of 54k to be about 84k total dead based on their assumption that they cannot confirm every actual death.

Thus, using the above, we can assume that the KIA on Russia’s side could be something like: 54k (Russia) + 23k (LDNR) = 77k; or their extrapolated estimate of 84k + 23k = ~107k.

However, that is just KIA alone. That doesn’t count Russia’s “irrecoverable losses”, which are people maimed or too injured to fight again. Russia’s irrecoverable are far smaller than that of Ukraine due to the far superior Russian battlefield medicine and ability to evacuate injured troops in time to save their limbs, etc. This is due to having helicopters and other transports far more readily available. Even so, we can estimate there’s got to be at least another 20-40k irrecoverable if not more—and I’ve seen some credible related figures that obliquely lead me to believe it’s not much more than that.

Then, if you figure that KIA/irrecoverable are typically about 25-35% of all wounded, we can assume total wounded may be another 150-250k which obviously refers to people not only so lightly wounded that they return to war, but that they even count twice, three times or more on the tally because they get re-wounded several times over the course of the war. Thus 300k “wounded” may actually only represent 100-200k real people, for instance; there are many people that can get multiple ‘purple hearts’.

The point I’m trying to make is that the official U.S. “casualty” number for Russia is something like 350k, and counting lightly wounded this may very well actually be relatively accurate. However, if you count wounded for Ukraine as well, the total “casualties” of every kind could be far north of 1 million. Ukraine may have 500k total “irrecoverable” losses as per the official Russian MOD figure, and then an additional hundreds of thousands of regular wounded who are forced to return to combat. Recall Putin said the ratio is 50/50, which would entail 500k additional wounded for a total casualty list of 1 million.

POWs

According to Putin, the official POW disparity is 1,348 Russian soldiers in captivity in Ukraine, and 6,465 Ukrainian soldiers in captivity in Russia.

First: this number seems oddly low given that we have had many previous numbers indicating far higher Ukrainian POWs, which I have reported here—so what gives?

For instance, even official Russian TASS news agency reported that a whopping 10,000 Ukrainian POWs were captured just after the Volga channel went live in summer 2023, during the big ‘counteroffensive’:

https://tass.com/politics/1681055

That’s a massive 10,000 surrendering in only 3 months—according to this.

Just last month, I covered this report which said Russia has over 20,000 AFU prisoners while Ukraine has 800 Russian POWs and 5000 LDPR ones:

So why the discrepancy?

Several possible reasons:

1. Putin is referring only to the Ukrainian prisoners that Russia has, i.e. on nominal Russian territory.

It has long been known that Ukrainian POWs are kept separately in both Donbass by LPR/DPR authorities or in Russia, depending on their charges and who captured them. Despite LDPR obviously being officially part of Russia now, Putin may still be referring only to the POWs on Russian territory. Just going by vague recollection, the last time I heard any credible figures long ago it was said that Donbass had thousands of Ukrainian POWs and there were thousands more in Russia as well.

2. Russia often exchanged unfavorably, i.e. 100 to 50, etc., thus they may have whittled their AFU prisoner count down by a lot more than the Russian POWs in Ukrainian captivity.

3. Russia granted many POWs amnesty when their background was checked and they were found to not be ideological radicals/nationalists, and they were removed from the list or even granted asylum and citizenship in Russia.

For instance, here’s one such heartwarming tale of Pasha, Ukrainian prisoner who refused to be exchanged back to Ukraine. Instead, he pledged allegiance to Russia and was allowed to move to Moscow with his elated girlfriend:

And there were many others like this.

4. Related to the above, as most know, Russia has formed several battalions—and possibly even much more than that—entirely of AFU prisoners who choose to now fight for Russia and are now considered free men—or at least after their service.

One of these famous battalions even has its own wiki and data source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdan_Khmelnitsky_Battalion

The Bogdan Khmelnitsky Battalion (Russian: Батальон Богдана Хмельницкого), or Bohdan Khmelnytsky Battalion is, according to Russian state media, a Russian "volunteer battalion" formed in February 2023, allegedly from Ukrainian POWs that have defected to the Russian Army.

And there’s another known one called Maxim Krivonos battalion, also made entirely of AFU defectors, which has actually just released a new video this week, and has their own Telegram channel.

⚡️⚡️⚡️ Exclusive !

Squad named after Maxim Krivonos.

Military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who went over to the side of the Russian Federation, together with another unit, take prisoner other military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

A fighter with the call sign “White” tells the whole story through the prism of a man who has been on the other side and is now fighting for this...

Another fighter from the same squad also gave an interview to our friend.

Given that a battalion can have upwards of 400-800 men and Russia formed potentially several of them, we can conclude that as many as several thousand Ukrainian POWs were removed from the prisoner tally in this way.

5. There have been hundreds, and possibly even thousands, of AFU POWs that have already been convicted and sentenced to prison for their crimes—most notably the various Azov soldiers from Mariupol. In fact, just this week was a news story of another batch being sentenced to prison. These are obviously no longer POWs and are now outright subjects of federal penitentiaries.

As you can see, by a combination of the above methods, Russia would have thinned out at least several thousand POWs from the official tally.

Either way though, Putin’s 1,348 to 6,465 figure corresponds to the general 1:5 casualty disparity which obviously corresponds perfectly and gives us more confidence that regular casualties truly are 1:5 in Russia’s favor.

Mobilization

Now this part is very interesting and perhaps most pertinent to the actual ongoing war.

Putin announced that Ukraine loses 50k a month, at a ratio of 25k irrecoverable and 25k recoverably wounded. But he states that Ukraine has managed to effectively mobilize ~30k men per month.

This obviously means that Ukraine is—for now—capable of maintaining its combat potential, though at progressively worse troop qualities.

Recall how well previously declared reports from the AFU’s own officials accord with this. For instance, Zaluzhny said Ukraine needs 20k men per month just to keep up, while others like Budanov have stated 30k+:

Many other Ukrainian officers and officials have stated that Ukraine needs to mobilize a total of 250k for the entire year of 2024—which is approximately 20k a month—like the commander of the elite Da Vinci’s Wolves unit:

While a new dispatch from a Ukrainian MP says they need 110k:

We’re at the midpoint of the year, and since this is a new release, we can assume he means 110k more on top of what they already mobilized in the first half of the year, which could already have been 5 x 20-30k.

By the way, Ukraine has about 21+ “regions”, each with dozens of towns, cities, villages, etc. If you break this 20-30k per month figure down, each region needs to mobilize 1000 men per month, or about 30 per day.

Consider how feasible this is: each region has dozens of towns/cities and only needs 30 men per day total. That means in each town, commissars only need to find one or two men and throw them into the back of the bus. Multiply that by a dozen towns and you have your 30 in the region. Multiply that by 30 days and you have your 1000 for that month. Multiply that by 20 regions and you have your 20k per month.

The problem is, people have been fighting back en masse—here’s the latest compilation from just yesterday:

An example report from today which shows the intensity of fodder hunting:

In Chernivtsi, the situation is critical, because of the mobilization of the city threatens to collapse at public utilities. Mayor Klitschukh said that in the last week alone, Vodokanal received 52 summonses, 25 summonses to the Trolleybus Department, and 70 summonses to the market. At railway stations and bus stations, scavengers hunt people with such activity that soon no one will come to the city.

As for losses, consider this breakdown:

Ukraine’s 25,000 monthly irrecoverable/KIA are about 800 losses per day.

In the war, there are about 5 major frontlines: Kupyansk-Kremennaya-Seversk zone, the new Kharkov breakthrough region, Donetsk zone (which includes Bakhmut, Avdeevka area, and others), the Zaporozhye front, and the Crimea/Kherson front.

Demonstrative example, minus Kharkov:

Each of these 5 major fronts is staffed by around 15-20 Ukrainian brigades for a total frontline length of ~1200km. This breaks down to about 100+ brigades covering 10km spaces each.

Now those 5 fronts divided by 800 losses is about 160 irrecoverable/KIA per front per day. Since each front has about 15-20 brigades, we can say very roughly that this distributes as about 8-10 casualties per brigade.

Now think a little deeper about how many actual granular battles, assaults, etc., take place on each particular front.

Take the Donetsk front as an example:

As we speak, there are major ongoing battles in Chasov Yar involving multiple brigades, regiments, dozens of separate battalions etc. There are daily assaults there with each side bitterly fighting and losing men. Then there’s the same thing in Avdeevka area, around Ochertino, with assaults yesterday taking place at Sokol and other nearby villages.

A bit lower, we’ve had multiple battles yesterday around Karlovka near Neteilove, in Krasnogorovka further south, in Georgievka nearby, and Konstantinovka near Novomikhailovka.

This is all just one region—all with their own separate brigades in active combat—which is supposed to have 160 total KIA as per our numbers. There are smaller battles I didnt’ even list—but just between the above, it means the AFU needs to only suffer about 20-30 casualties per battle. That can be done with a single FAB bomb drop, or just a few minutes worth of drone work; and remember, Russia is now launching hundreds of Fabs per day, with some fronts claiming 40-80 just on their front alone, like in Kharkov recently. Recall just several days ago in one of my recent pieces I posted two direct AFU frontline reports which listed “several dozen” casualties for just that battalion in just that reported day. Remember, a single blown up BMP/troop carrier can be an instant ~10 casualties.

Expand that out to all the granular battles of each region, and you can easily arrive at the 160 KIA per region and ~800 irrecoverable/KIA total for the day.

To validate the above explainer, here’s the Russian MOD’s official Ukrainian losses for today, June 6th—note how the region breakdown numbers match what I described:

From the summary of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation dated June 06, 2024 The enemy's losses for yesterday amounted to:

⏺1,490 military personnel 12 armored vehicles, including 2 tanks 26 artillery systems, 5 of them self-propelled guns

⏺25 units of special vehicles

⏺48 UAVs

⏺electronic warfare station "Bukovel-AD"

➖ There are destroyed two AFU ammunition depots in the Donetsk direction.

➖ Affected are: a storage warehouse for unmanned boats, a place for training and launching unmanned aerial vehicles of an airfield type, as well as temporary locations for foreign mercenaries.

➖ Seven HIMARS and Alder rockets, as well as a Neptune anti-ship missile, were shot down by air defense means.

Also:

Ukraine may be just keeping up with their losses, according to Putin’s numbers, but that would mean they are still effectively shrinking in comparison to Russia. That’s because the Russian army is growing as they are recruiting a net positive amount of soldiers relative to their own losses. This can be easily corroborated by all the recent UA reports that Russia is stationing hundreds of thousands of new men in the north, not to mention the panicked NATO calls to send troops to free up any and all Ukrainians not on the frontline. Which, by the way: Ukraine’s bayonet/combat to rear/non-combat troop ratio (tooth-to-tail ratio) is said to already be 50%, which is wildly anomalous. Modern militaries typically have a 10-30% combat troop ratio or so. It means Ukraine has already tapped a huge portion of its essential noncombat roles to the frontline. That being said, Ukraine is able to maintain such a crazy ratio due to NATO effectively acting as the AFU’s rear “tail”, particularly in the critical Polish rear logistics operation where the vast majority of Ukraine’s supply pours through.

Ultimately, this means as the Russian army grows, the force parity will get increasingly worse for Ukraine as they are only able to equalize losses each month while the Russian Armed Forces accrue a major net positive.

As a last thought experiment, now that we have credible figures for Ukraine’s losses we can theoretically calculate when Ukraine could run out of disposable men. I posted these numbers a few reports ago:

In the coming months, after lowering the draft bar to 25 years, an additional 100 thousand men born in 1998-1999 will be called up to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. During these years, 416,349 boys were born. About half of them are already abroad. Summon the remaining half.

Cursory research shows me Ukraine averaged about 100-150k male births per year during most of the 90s.

We can then infer that going from 25 to 18, as Putin says they plan to do, would make available another 7 x 100k = 700k men, or 7 x 150k, we get ~1M.

At the current burn rate of 30k per month, it would take 33 months or about 2.5 years to whittle down the ‘generous’ amount of their male combat potential. For the 700k number it would take a mere 23 months or a bit less than 2 years. Plus, that’s not counting—as the above quote states—the assumption that half or more of those have already long fled, which would then cut down those figures to under 1 year or about a year and a few months at the generous end.

Of course, many other social, economic, and morale-grounded reasons could likely lead to even earlier collapse if even a portion of that remaining pool of men was eaten through by the Russian army.

Putin’s Highlights

Let’s take a look at some of the key soundbites:

On the topic of mobilization, Putin says that the U.S. administration is now pressuring Ukraine to lower the mobilization age all the way to 18 and, most critically, that they only need Zelensky as the scapegoat to pass the law to do that. Once they force him to lower it to 18, they will get rid of him. Putin even gives the exact timeline: he believes it will take about a year from today, and by next Spring they will boot Zelensky out as there are several “other candidates” they have in mind:

Also it should be noted that in the section directly after this, he states that this is all due to ongoing losses and that the earlier quoted 50,000 per month are “just the losses we can see (confirm) on the battlefield”. He states that there are likely far more losses even deeper in the strategic depth where Russia cannot estimate them:

And remember, implicit in Putin’s one year projection for Zelensky’s downfall is the message that Putin believes the Ukrainian war will go on even longer than that. If he believes it will take a year just for them to get down to 18 year olds, then there will have to be quite some time after that for Russia to grind through the last mobilization bracket. That being said, my long time prediction for the war’s end has been somewhere in Q2 or middle of 2025, so it could track with that.

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Putin clarifies that while Russia does not ‘wave the nuclear baton’, its nuclear doctrine is there for a reason and Russia would in fact use nuclear weapons if its doctrine is violated:

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On a humorously related note, Putin says it’s good that the West views him like a monster: “Let them be afraid.”

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Putin says French and British specialists have to enter all the coordinates and “automate” the flight tasks of the French/British cruise missiles for Ukraine, which implies their participation in the war:

This of course led to the most talked about segment of all. Putin proposed the end-all-be-all asymmetric checkmate on the Anglo-Empire by stating that if the escalations continue, Russia will be free to supply its own weapons to any hostile adversaries of the U.S. and its vassals. This of course implies advanced ballistic or ship-killer cruise missiles to the Houthis to destroy U.S. Navy assets in the Red Sea once and for all, etc.:

One analyst’s thoughts:

Where can the Russian Federation put its long-range systems, etc.?
Yes, in the same Yemen or Lebanon, etc.
Yemen will beat them in maritime trade, Lebanon in Israel, etc.

There is still Venezuela. Very uncomfortable for the United States at different times.
Suppose more rockets go to Cuba or Africa.
Yes, in the future there will be new wars where it will fight against someone, and then, following the example of the Ukrainian crisis of the Russian Federation or other countries, opponents can officially transfer weapons.

There are options.
Remember, we wrote that the West violated the unspoken kuloir arrangements for military cases. Allowing blows to Russia is just from here.

Some of that escalatory action is already being seen as Russia has now announced a naval flotilla to Cuba and the Caribbean, where exercises will be performed in obviously demonstrative character right next to the U.S.

Which apparently will include the Zircon hypersonic capable Yasen class nuclear sub:

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Two last bits of interest:

Putin chides the West for its bias:

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Putin explains what deNazification means for Ukraine:

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Putin compares the Kosovo situation to Donbass, citing NATO’s hypocrisy and double standards in responding to the two crises:

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For the record, vis-a-vis the Western arms situation, a degenerative looking Biden has now clarified that he’s authorized usage of American arms only in the Russian region of hostilities near the border, not deep into Russia:

Similarly, though I haven’t seen full verification yet, Macron allegedly authorized the use of Storm Shadows on Russian territory, but “only to hit sites where Russian missiles/attacks themselves come from.”

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