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Russia Loses Over 400,000 Troops in Two Years, UK Says—Minority and Remote Regions Hit Hardest
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![Photo of Dariia Mykhailenko]( "Photo of Dariia Mykhailenko")
British intelligence says Russia has sustained persistently high casualty rates since launching its illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with likely more than 400,000 soldiers killed or wounded in both 2024 and 2025, while ethnic Russians from major cities continue to make up a disproportionately small share of those losses.
According to an intelligence update published by the UK Ministry of Defense on X on December 23, Moscow has concentrated its recruitment efforts on poorer regions, many of them predominantly populated by ethnic minorities.
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This approach allows the Russian state to rely on financial incentives while limiting the political impact of losses on urban populations with greater political agency.
“By focusing recruitment efforts disproportionately on impoverished regions, often predominantly populated by ethnic minorities, Russia’s state apparatus better leverages financial inducements, whilst also limiting the impact on those urban-dwelling parts of the Russian population that have greater political agency,” the update said.
The assessment adds that Russian leader Putin and the country’s senior leadership are “almost certainly prepared to tolerate continuously high casualty rates so long as this does not negatively affect public or elite support for the war, and those losses can be replaced.”
British intelligence also cited a large-scale study by independent Russian outlet Proekt, which found that fewer than 1 percent of Russian state officials have relatives who have taken part in the war against Ukraine. The finding underscores the unequal distribution of the human cost of the war, with casualties concentrated far from Russia’s political and economic centers.
Earlier, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi reported that Russia increased the size of its forces to around 710,000 personnel in preparation for a large-scale offensive against Ukraine.
-72b63a4e0c8c475ad81fe3eed3f63729.jpeg "Photo of Cyril Barabaltchouk")
-111f0e5095e02c02446ffed57bfb0ab1.jpeg "Photo of Roman Kohanets")
-aa506f86aa95fbe26b86c8f2033238ac.jpg "Illustrative image. A predecessor of the Barvinok-K, a Ukrainian Kvitnyk-E05 laser-guided artillery shell. 2017. (Source: Wikimedia)")
