Paris says 150,000 Russian soldiers have died since the start of the conflict

Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné delivered this assessment in an interview with “Novaïa Gazeta”.

Some 150,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to estimates communicated by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs on Friday May 3. “Russia’s military failure is already here. We estimate Russian military losses at 500,000, including 150,000 deaths”declared Stéphane Séjourné in an interview published in the European edition of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “Why all this? It can be summed up in two words: for nothing.”

This estimate of Russian losses is slightly lower than that presented by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last February, when he reported the death of 180,000 enemy soldiers. The United Kingdom, for its part, estimated at the end of April that around 450,000 Russians had been killed or injured in Ukraine. The Mediazona site, in partnership with the BBC Russian service, managed to identify the names of more than 51,000 Russian soldiers killed in combat. This is therefore a minimum floor. Moscow has not disclosed any information on the number of deaths and injuries among its troops since September 2022, when a report of nearly 6,000 killed was communicated.

The Ukrainian army on the defensive

On the Ukrainian side, at the end of February, President Volodymyr Zelensky reported 31,000 soldiers dead. “Not 300,000, not 150,000, as Putin and his circle of liars say. But each of these losses is a big loss for us”, he added at a press conference. According to numerous Western security sources, however, Ukrainian military losses are largely underestimated. The Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, estimated Ukrainian losses at 444,000 during the same period, without specifying whether he was only talking about dead or dead and wounded. On Friday, he reported 111,000 Ukrainian losses, still without details, since the start of the year.

The Ukrainian army has been on the defensive since the failure of its major counter-offensive last summer. Russia maintains the initiative in the face of an adversary which is struggling to recruit new soldiers and is faced with slow Western aid. The resumption of American military assistance, after the approval, at the end of April, of a $61 billion plan, should help kyiv consolidate its forces and try to stabilize the front, particularly in the east, in the areas of Chassiv Iar and Avdiïvka.

Ukraine is all the more in difficulty because it lacks anti-aircraft defense means, which has allowed the Russians to bomb essential infrastructure, in particular the electricity network and railway lines. Some military analysts believe Russia may be on the verge of launching a major new offensive in Ukraine.