The invasion troops sent by Vladimir Putin into Ukraine are suffering heavy casualties, but most of them are coming from poor regions of Russia, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an assessment on Sunday morning.

Russian soldiers in uniform at a training center for mobilizationPhoto: AA/ABACA / Abaca Press / Profimedia

What British military experts say:

  • While Russia continues to experience extremely high human losses, their impact varies greatly between Russian regions.
  • In terms of population, the richest cities Moscow and St. Petersburg remained relatively untouched. This especially applies to the families of the country’s elite.
  • On February 21, 2023, high-ranking Russian officials were photographed in the first two rows of the audience for President Putin’s address to the nation. It is known that none of them have children serving in the army.
  • In many eastern regions, the death rate (recorded during the war) as a percentage of the population is more than 30 times higher than in Moscow.
  • In some regions, ethnic minorities are the most affected; in Astrakhan, approximately 75% of the victims are representatives of the Kazakh and Tatar minorities.
  • As Russia’s Defense Ministry struggles to address the shortage of combat personnel, the isolation of the more affluent and influential in Russian society is likely to remain a major concern.

According to Ukraine’s assessment on Saturday, since February 24, 2022, 158,000 Russian soldiers have been “liquidated”.