Russia May Be Losing 50,000 Troops A Month. It Recruits 32,000.
We don’t know for sure how many Russian troops are dying in Ukraine right now. But it’s more than the Kremlin can replace.
Is Russia losing 30,000 troops a month as its wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 44th month?
Or is it losing more than that—50,000 a month ... or even more?
As the Russians shove more and more regiments and brigades into the narrow salient northeast of the fortress city of Pokrovsk, their casualties are increasing.
Different sources disagree over exactly how much Russian casualties are increasing. They don’t disagree that more Russians are dying, getting maimed, or going missing, many of them in and around the chaotic, 40-square-kilometer salient.
A leaked Russian document provides a baseline for Russian losses between 1 January and 1 September this year. According to the document, Russian forces suffered 281,550 casualties in those 245 days:
86,744 killed in action
33,996 missing in action
158,529 wounded in action
2,311 captured
That’s 35,000 casualties a month through the early weeks of Russia’s renewed push toward Pokrovsk. Of those 35,000 casualties, several thousand were probably temporary as the more lightly wounded recuperated and returned to service.
Given that Russia recruited nearly 32,000 fresh troops a month over the same eight months, there’s a good chance the Kremlin enjoyed a small troop surplus throughout much of 2025.
But Russian commanders’ determination to capture Pokrovsk, one of the last urban strongpoints between the Russians and the free twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, has erased that surplus. Now the Russians are almost certainly losing more troops than they’re recruiting every month.
It’s unclear how deep the deficit is, however.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.
