Ukraine Update: Costly Russian Casualties Setting off Demographic Timebomb for Kremlin

[C0RI0LANUS]

December 2024 was likely the most costly month for Russia since President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of neighboring Ukraine almost three years ago.

At least 48,000 troops were killed or wounded last month, the sixth straight month that Russian forces suffered an increase in monthly losses on the battlefield, British defense intelligence officials reported. Russia sustained at least 2,200 casualties on 19 Dec, the highest record of combat losses on a single day.

Russian casualties offloaded from truck or train car. (Undated photo: AP)


Moscow sustained 429,660 casualties in its war in 2024, a dramatic increase from the 252,940 battlefield losses in 2023. Since the start of the war, more than 790,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded, British officials said.

For comparison, the UK suffered 750,000 military casualties during the six years it fought the Second World War in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repotted 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers KIA and 370,000 WIA since the start of Russia’s invasion.


Crosses marked only with numbers stand on the graves of unknown pro-Russian separatists at a cemetery in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. (Photo: AFP)

Russian losses in Ukraine are helping fuel a demographic timebomb that could see the country’s population reduced by half by the end of the century.

“The impact on Russian society is devastating,” said Harley Balzer, emeritus professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University.

“From Russia's perspective, (winning the war in Ukraine) is the smaller problem. The bigger issue is, is it going to be a viable country afterward regardless?”

“Life expectancy for young men is on par with a fourth-world country. Life expectancy at age 15 for a Russian man right before the (COVID-19) pandemic was about the same as his counterpart in Haiti.”

A large study into why Russian males had such short life expectancies published in 2014 concluded one of the main factors in early deaths was excessive alcohol consumption.
Other factors cited in a more recent investigation last year by the independent Russian media outlet Cherta, included high rates of murder, suicide, car crashes, and other fatal accidents.

The appalling number of Russian casualties was the major reason the Kremlin press-ganged ethnic minorities and recruited North Korean soldiers for human wave attacks. Vladimir Putin’s anxiety of a billion plus Chinese population on his eastern border was part of his reasoning in re-establishing an All-Slavic Union with the Kremlin at the head, a neo-USSR with the power and glory it once held. But his brutal invasion backfired and he has cost Russia (and Ukraine) generations of Slavic people never to be born.

Sources:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jan/8/russian-casualties-ukraine-war-reportedly-set-mont/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

https://kyivindependent.com/russian-losses-in-ukraine-fuelling-devastating-demographic-timebomb-experts-say/