NATO: Russia Has Suffered Up to 40,000 Casualties in Ukraine

Russia has suffered up to 40,000 casualties, and between 7,000 and 15,000 deaths, in Ukraine, a senior NATO military officer announced on Wednesday.

The term “casualty” includes all soldiers who have been injured, killed, or captured in battle.

Wednesday’s estimate is the first such figure released by NATO since the war started in late February.

Following NATO’s policy of anonymity, the military official’s identity has not been released. However, the official stated that the figure was calculated using information from Ukraine, public data, and indications from Russia, according to the Associated Press.

NATO estimates Russian casualties in Ukraine between 30,000 and 40,000

Fierce resistance by Ukraine has made what Russia may have believed would be a simple invasion into a full-scale war. Frustration at the current state of the war may have led Russian forces to target civilian infrastructure to weaken morale in Ukraine.

Speaking from NATO’s military headquarters in Belgium, the military official claimed that the the estimated figure of 30,000 to 40,000 casualties on the Russian side was determined using a calculation that states that three soldiers are wounded for every one soldier killed.

The US has not estimated casualties on either side of the war, as it has stated that current information may be unreliable.

Russia’s official figures, which have not been updated since March 2, indicate that 498 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine and 1,597 have been injured.

Oleksiy Arestovych, Ukrainian presidential advisor, stated that Russia has lost 40% of its attacking troops and would likely not engage in nuclear war.

He also predicted that the active invasion as we know it would be over by April due to major Russian losses.

NATO’s estimate comes as its Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that the Western alliance will deploy four new battle groups across Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia as part of its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

NATO already has battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

“I expect leaders will agree to strengthen NATO’s posture in all domains with major increases of forces in the eastern part of the alliance, on land, in the air, and at sea. The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia,” Stoltenberg told journalists in Brussels.

Ukraine accuses Russia of taking children

Ukraine accused Russia of “forcibly transferring” 2,389 children from the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk to Russia on Tuesday.

Iryna Venediktova, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, stated that Ukraine is investigating reports of Russia taking children from the regions.

In a tweet, the US Embassy in Kyiv wrote that the act amounted to “kidnapping.”

Similarly, officials from the city of Mariupol in Ukraine, which has come under heavy shelling from Russian troops, claim that Russia has deported thousands of people, including women and children, against their will.

“Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents were deported on to the Russian territory,” the city council of Mariupol wrote on social media.

“It is known that the capture Mariupol residents were taken to filtration camps, where the occupies checked people’s phones and documents…After the inspection, some Mariupol residents were redirected to remote cities in Russia, the fate of others remains unknown,” a statement from the Mariupol city council reads.