Putin Reveals New Casualty Insights, as Russian Infrastructure Campaign Ravages Ukraine

During the latest Valdai forum presentation and Q&A, Putin gave some rare insight into the war’s casualty figures and how they play into general tactics, which is worth looking at.

Here’s the relevant excerpt in its entirety:

He states in the month of September, Ukraine’s total casualties were 44,700 with slightly less than half reportedly being irretrievable. In the same month, mobilization and recruitment brought 18,500 new bodies while 14,500 total lightly wounded returned to the front from the hospital.

These are surprisingly detailed numbers suggesting Putin’s deep insight into Ukraine’s internal figures. Let’s break them down.

Less than half of 44,700 being hard losses would be something like 20-22k hard losses, while the remaining 22-24k would be lightly wounded which will return to combat after convalescence.

Out of that 20-22k hard losses, usually ~50% can be assumed to be KIA with the other 50% being maimed, i.e. amputations, etc. Thus, for the sake of this exercise we will assume about 10-11k per month are KIA. Divided by 30, this is roughly ~330-360 daily KIA—let’s call it 350—with another 350 maimed.

According to Putin, Ukraine gains 18,500 new recruits plus 14,500 wounded returnees per month, for a total regeneration rate of 33,000 monthly. We just saw that Ukraine loses ~45,000 total, for a net loss of ~12,000 per month.

A Ukrainian official just recently happened to claim that Ukraine still mobilizes 30k total monthly, but even top Ukrainian analyst Tatarigami was skeptical, which would suggest he sides closer to Putin on these figures:

But one thing it does reveal, is that some of the pro-Russian side’s wilder estimates are highly exaggerated. There are some on the pro-Russian side who believe Ukraine suffers 1,500 pure KIA per day, or even more—and this is clearly not the case, as per Putin himself. It appears at most Ukraine fluctuates between 250-400 KIA per day, while Russia is likely in the 125-200 range, though both can have anomalous ‘spikes’ depending on the day and operation.

Keep in mind these Ukrainian losses do not take into account the desertions, which as we’ve covered here before are claimed to be upwards of 10,000 per month or more. But these figures can be misleading because we don’t know how many deserters are actually caught and brought back, or come back on their own. One can assume a good portion of them is dragged back in some way or another simply because Ukraine has an extremely permissive attitude for deserters due to the desperate state of its manpower.

Even Azov head Andrei Biletsky just shared his belief that a mass amnesty will be granted to all deserters in the future for this very reason:

At the 1:10 mark of the Putin video at the top, he goes on to mention desertions, saying that 160,000 Ukrainians have deserted since January of this year, which would be closer to 20,000 per month.

Further interesting is the rare admission at 2:20 by Putin that Russia too suffers from casualties and desertions, but “much fewer” than Ukraine. Some Ukrainian investigators have found upwards of 20-30k cases of desertions in total for Russia. While that sounds like a lot, it pales next to the 200-250k several Ukrainian sources attribute to total AFU desertions since the start of the war.

Putin ends by saying that lowering the mobilization age to 21 or 18 will not change the fundamental issues.

Coincidentally, at the time that Putin’s statements triggered discussions about the validity of Ukrainian losses, several new reports from the Ukrainian front appeared to attest to Putin’s characterizations of the AFU’s manpower issues. For instance, from the Novopavlovka direction just west of Pokrovsk:

Ukranian channels confirm the dire situation in Zaporozhye/Dnepropetrovsk. They report exactly what I stated below. Reinforcements are not being sent, even though they asked for them. AFU command is even unwilling to send 1-2 battalions. Is it a manpower issue? Additionally, fortifications aren’t being built either because the retreat is so constant. The line is not stable enough to create proper defensive networks. It seems that the AFU command is unwilling or unable to actually stabilize the line here.

The Ukrainian channel’s post:

If that wasn’t enough, prominent Western correspondent for CNN, Guardian, etc., Neil Hauer was able to interview Ukraine’s 14th National Guard Brigade which had just returned from a rotation in Novoekonomichne on the eastern flank of the Pokrovsk-Mirnograd agglomeration.

He spoke with the brigade’s commander named Bobruk, who revealed:

1. Bobruk and his team had just completed 90-day rotation, basically on the zero line/gray area the entire time. Surviving this was almost a miracle. They now had just five days off (mostly still in Donetsk oblast) before heading back - the lack of manpower is that bad.

2. Units are all tiny now, on both sides. Bobruk’s team deploys mostly in pairs, and Russians come in ones or twos. ‘Even three soldiers together is already enough to almost guarantee a (FPV) drone strike,’ Bobruk said.

3. Armour has nearly disappeared from the battlefield. Tanks, IFVs and heavy vehicles are all but absent now. ‘We saw enemy armour literally three times total in 90 days,’ Bobruk said. ‘It’s only men now - just meat.’

Funnily enough, at the same time ‘historian’ Phillips O’Brien was promoting a contrarian new piece of his own which argued the complete opposite: that Ukraine’s “manpower issues” are overblown by ‘poor analysts’.

Hauer immediately swooped in to slam the misguided professor in a case of ‘friendly fire’ that’s becoming an increasingly common sight on the pro-UA side these days:

Also of interest is Putin’s first-time acknowledgement of Russia’s now-infamous ‘pocket advances’ of mere pairs of soldiers. During the discussions he admitted that Russian soldiers now advance in tiny groups of two or three at a time.

Listen at 0:40 of the video below:

I referred to the way combat tactics have evolved with the introduction of new technology. But just look as what our television networks have been reporting on the way our troops have been advancing their positions. Of course, this does take time. There are advances, even if they move forward by groups of two or three, there are still advances. The electronic warfare systems have been quite effective in jamming these drones to enable our troops to advance. The situation here is quite similar.

This is revealing because it represents the first real official, high-level admission of Russia’s current prevailing tactics. Many perhaps have been skeptical, imagining these reports as being isolated cases, and that huge Russian armored columns must still be razing through Ukrainian defenses somewhere. Putin has dispelled such illusions and confirmed decisively that the nature of the war has truly shifted into an unrecognizable state of ‘trickle warfare’.

The most remarkable aspect of Putin’s discussion was the sheer frankness with which he spoke of the state of the Russian Armed Forces. For instance, he doesn’t shy away from admitting that ATACMS did cause Russia damage, but then eventually was adapted to.

Similarly, most leaders would likely shrink away from so freely admitting what seems a compromising fact: that Russian troops are trickling in this piecemeal fashion. But Putin takes this fact and owns it, explaining that an advance is an advance, no matter how gradual it is.

The conflict has turned into an interesting equation because both sides now openly understand its nature, including each other’s mutual strengths and weaknesses. Putin essentially admits that Russia is using the gradual boa constrictor or ‘thousand cuts’ strategy, and that Ukraine cannot plug every gap on every front. He points to the slow inevitability of such a strategy. But even knowing this, Ukraine is not able to do anything about it because of the vast resource disparity between the two countries.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are losing 2-3 villages per day and this is just the beginning

The Ukrainian army is retreating, losing several settlements daily. This was stated by Armed Forces officer Anton Cherny on the “Politeka” channel, as reported by the TG channel “PolitNavigator.” The host asked to comment on the “stabilization of the front,” but the officer objected, saying that stopping the Russian army was not successful:

Evacuation of Pokrovsk has already taken place. The Russians are advancing very seriously in the Dnipropetrovsk region. We lose 2-3 small villages every day. And while the battles there are active, the enemy is advancing well, for them this is a good pace. Some settlements are constantly being lost.

We need to prepare, they have probed our defense. Maybe now there is a moment when we are holding them back a little, but this does not mean that the situation will be better for us in the future.

True to the pronouncement above, Russia seized several settlements just today alone: Chunyshyne, just south of Pokrovsk; Fedorovka and Vyomka on Seversk’s southern flank; and there are several new settlements ready to fall next time on the Gulyaipole front and elsewhere.

The only option for Ukraine is asymmetric warfare, attacking Russia at perceived non-combat ‘weak points’, which they believe lie in the social and economic spheres. This explains Ukraine’s current widespread campaign against Russian oil and gas infrastructure. While it is generating some fleeting success, Russia has responded with its own full-scale counter-campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Even as of this writing another powerful strike on electrical substations in Kharkov and other widespread hits on Odessa are being carried out.

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Some assorted items:

During the Valdai discussions Putin seemed to have played-down the Tomahawk threat a little more diplomatically. But in a new impromptu interview with reporter Zarubin, Putin gives a far more declarative response to the potential issue of Tomahawks in Ukraine, outright admitting that it would destroy US-Russian relations:

By the way, after the flash-in-the-pan propaganda boost the initial newsbreak provided, the Tomahawk canard went the expected way:

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Speaking of Russian infrastructure strikes, new videos attest to Russian drones now routinely used to strike major transmission lines. Seen below the drones strike one such line after it had been undergoing repairs for a previous attack:

After Russia’s latest round of brutal strikes, even Zelensky was forced to cry uncle, begging for a ‘unilateral ceasefire’ in the skies—in short, a call to stop the strikes which are now crippling Ukrainian industries:

Supply trains are now routinely hit by new kinds of Geran drones, some of which are able to track the trains autonomously on the move:

Russian drones paralyse Ukraine’s military transportation.

In the 404th instance, a real transport collapse has occurred: Russian UAVs “Geran” with cameras are hunting military railway trains. Over the past month, more than a dozen echelons have been destroyed, and official Kiev is carefully hiding these losses.

Russian Geran UAVs have begun striking moving targets.

▪️In the Chernihiv region, a strike on a Ukrainian rail fuel train was recorded for the first time while it was moving, 150-200 km from the border. The new drone model is equipped with a night-vision camera, a guidance system, and communications with operators hundreds of kilometers away.

▪️The first drone hit a locomotive, bringing the train to a halt, and subsequent drones began striking platforms and tank cars.

▪️Russian drones also collided with two Ukrainian helicopters, which attempted to shoot them down, putting them at risk of crashing.

▪️A minicomputer, capable of simultaneously processing video and recognizing targets by comparing them to pre-loaded models, was found among the wreckage.

RVvoenkor

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Recall how weeks ago Russia struck a factory that had just opened after major investments and expenditures had already been made. Now it has repeated this act, as a major Ukrainian logistics production site in Lvov was hit after being under construction for a year.

Here’s the Ukrainian video touting the plant’s launch—check the 2:15 mark for the ‘before and after’ from last night:

Yes, you read that correctly — not “Sparrow Park Lvov”, as claimed, but rather “Ukrpromenergoresurs”, which was formally part of this industrial complex but was used as an industrial warehouse hub.

The site housed tanks with petrochemical components, fuels and lubricants, and energy equipment, including parts of pump units, pipeline valve assemblies, and blocks of thermal power systems. Officially, the enterprise specializes in energy engineering, but some of the premises were actually used for storing equipment and materials for armored vehicle purposes — components for repairing equipment and energy systems, supporting the logistics of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The nature of the fire and the power of the detonations at the strike site fully correspond to the ignition of petrochemical substances and materials with high thermal conductivity, which excludes the version of an “accidental fire”.

Thus, the strike hit a facility directly involved in the enemy’s military and industrial logistics — a warehouse disguised as civilian infrastructure, serving as an auxiliary supply node for the western cluster of energy and technical support.

It is worth noting separately that peaceful tenants were indeed present. As sources confirm, the industrial park included warehouses and sections rented for storing products of mass retail brands — such as Sinsay, Mohito, and others. However, this does not negate the fact of the dual purpose of the facility: behind one fence, civilian storage units and military logistics infrastructure coexisted.

👆DonbassPartizan

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A very atmospheric video from last night’s strikes in Lvov comes by way of British mercenary Richard Woodruff. Here he’s seen holed up somewhere in the western Ukrainian city under an onslaught of Gerans and, according to him, cruise missiles as well:

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Lastly, an instructive video from Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Pyotr Tolstoy who sounds off on Europe and the ‘Rules Based Order’. His dialogue gives an idea of the new type of confidence and low-tolerance sentiment blossoming in Russia in relation to Europe. He firmly states that Russia is in fact the largest European country and will not be dictated to as such, and that all Europe is being hijacked by the minority far-western European countries who want to speak for the remainder of central and eastern Europe:

It’s particularly symbolic because the man he’s speaking to is none other than Alexander von Bismarck, great-grandson of Otto von Bismarck.

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