Some Russian soldiers last just minutes on front lines, military bloggers say
Kiev — Russian soldiers can expect to live only 20 to 35 minutes on average after reaching certain parts of the front lines of the war in Ukraine, according to a dire prediction from Russian military bloggers quoted in an article by Oxford historian Peter Frankopan. Foreign Policy report. CBS News has not independently verified the claim. But similar statements are increasingly common on Russian military channels, indicating that more Russians are becoming this way. aware of the war and the toll it took on them — a toll Kremlin officials have long tried to keep out of sight.
caused by war surprising losses About young men of Russia. director of the British intelligence agency GCHQ in question Last month’s Russian war deaths are now probably reached around 500,000. Ukrainian defense ministry says It removed more than 1.4 million wounded or killed Russian soldiers from the battlefield.
Russia is losing men at a faster rate as drones fill the front lines, creating what is known as the “kill zone.” No longer able to rely on heavy artillery that can be easily hit by cheap first-person perspective drones, Russia’s military has turned to infiltration tactics: using small groups of foot soldiers or motorcycles to probe for weaknesses in Ukraine’s lines.
This led to bloodier conflicts. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, more than 80 percent of losses in Russia are now caused by drones. And estimates show that Russians killed in battle outnumbered the wounded, a first in modern warfare.
Ukraine faces its own manpower problems and must resort to similar infiltration tactics to push back Russian lines.
“Manpower has been an issue since the late summer of 2023,” Ukraine-based military analyst Rob Lee told CBS News. “We have had some cases where infantrymen remained in positions without rotation for more than a year.”
However, the Ukrainian military has managed to more effectively reduce its soldiers’ exposure to danger by using unmanned aerial vehicles to replace some troops in combat, medical evacuation and logistics missions.
“We say there is no need to send humans where the robot can do the job,” Oleksandr Kamyshin, the official in charge of Ukraine’s defense industry, said in an interview with CBS News this spring. With some guessesRussia currently loses eight people killed or seriously injured for every person Ukraine loses.
Russia’s relentless human waves achieved some success on the battlefield. While Ukraine’s top general says his army has retaken 230 square miles this year, Russia is still making progress in key areas in and around Ukraine’s coveted Donetsk region. Ukrainian commanders said last week that Russian soldiers were trying to infiltrate the outskirts of Kostyantynivka, an industrial town in Donetsk.
But more Russians are beginning to feel the toll of war firsthand.
In a nationwide survey of Russian public opinion released Monday by the Russian Institute for Conflict Research and Analysis, a Ukrainian think tank, 31% of respondents said one or more family members had been mobilized; This is a 14% increase from 2022.
Oleksandr Shulga, head of the think tank, cautioned that the findings should not be exaggerated: “Even after four years, the majority of Russians do not see this war as an existential war.”
Still, he said: “Most Russians know that someone has been killed in action since the beginning of the war: only 29% said no one among their relatives or acquaintances has died in fighting.”
