About 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, according to estimates by U.S. and British intelligence services.
Richard Moore, head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6, said on Thursday that the death toll of 15,000 Russians was likely a conservative estimate and a “real blow” to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had hoped for a quick victory without heavy casualties.
“This is about the same toll as the 10 years they spent in Afghanistan in the 1980s,” he said at a Security Forum in Aspen, in the US Rocky Mountains. “And we’re not talking about middle-class youth from St. Petersburg or Moscow,” he added. “These are poor children from rural areas; they come from working-class towns in Siberia, and many belong to ethnic minorities.”
On Wednesday, the head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), gave a similar estimate. “There were about 15,000 dead and possibly three times more injured,” Bill Burns said.
The Ukrainian government estimates the number of Russians killed to be much higher and speaks of 36,200. Moscow has only given numbers twice, the last time on March 25. At the time it reported 1,351 deaths among its troops.
