
In the first month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, analysts of InformNapalm volunteer intelligence community made estimates of the losses of the Russian army using serial numbers from the decoration certificates of the Russian occupiers. It turned out that with the help of Russian state awards, it was possible to accurately calculate the losses of the Russian army. We continued our tracking and methodically collected the serial numbers of Russian awards. We collected more than a thousand different decoration documents of the Russian military personnel over 15 months of the full-scale war.
What are “Russian losses”? Calculation methodology
General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) provides daily statistical reports on the estimated numbers of the Russian occupiers killed in action (KIA). These published indicators include not only representatives of the Russian Armed Forces. Since the first day of the full-scale war, the following armed formations have been fighting against Ukraine:
Russian Federation:
- Regular army of the Russian Federation
- Russian Guard
- Border guards (FSB)
- BARS detachments (partly made up of volunteers in the first months of the war)
- Volunteers from Russia
- So-called private military companies
- Mobilized Russians (since September 22, 2022)
In addition, Russia has been involving the following personnel to work on the front line:
- Ministry of Emergency Situations (mining and demining, engineering work, rescue ops)
- Repair teams of military equipment manufacturing plants
- Civilian medics from Russia working in Russian military hospitals
- Civilian construction teams building military facilities under contracts with the Russian army
Formations of collaborators from the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR):
- 1st Army Corps and other uniformed agencies of the DPR
- Personnel drafted in the temporarily occupied part of the Donetsk Oblast
Formations of collaborators from the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR):
- 2nd Army Corps and other uniformed agencies of the LPR
- Personnel drafted in the temporarily occupied part of the Luhansk Oblast
Representatives of these three large groups have been counted in the AFU statistics as part of the general losses of the Russian invasion force.
Invasion force
In February 2022, the Russian Federation launched a full-scale war, having amassed about 150-250 thousand soldiers on the borders with Ukraine (Russian army + Russian Guard). This indicator is rather arbitrary, because any Russian military unit involved in the attack on Ukraine in one way or another could be attributed to the invasion army. These forces also included personnel of military airfields and missile forces that were actively shelling Ukraine, repair brigades, logistics units of the Russian army, and others.
The armed forces of the so-called DPR/LPR should also be added to the Russian invasion force. Since 2014, they were partly filled by the Russian military men (command, officers, instructors, technical specialists, so-called “servicemen on leave”).
In the occupied part of the Donetsk Oblast it is the so-called 1st Army Corps (1st AC, DPR People’s Militia). In different years, the personnel strength of this formation ranged from 20 to 35 thousand soldiers before the full-scale invasion.
In the occupied part of the Luhansk Oblast it is the so-called 2nd Army Corps (2nd AC, LPR People’s Militia). In different years, the personnel strength of this formation ranged from 15 to 20 thousand soldiers before the full-scale invasion.
From the first days of the war, the Russians launched an active mobilization in the occupied territories, conscripting additional recruits from the occupied territories into the 1st and 2nd Army Corps. Since that time, there have been several waves of mobilization in the occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. They yielded tens of thousands of mobilized soldiers.
In Russia, the Ministry of Defense launched the formation of the so-called Battle Army Reserve of the Country (BARS) detachments made of volunteer reservists. The first active BARS training camps were manned at the end of 2021. Some of these formations were straight volunteer units, whereas some had contracts with specific departments of the Russian Ministry of Defense, but not with the Ministry of Defense as such. They were especially active in the first months of the war.
When it became clear that the regular army was not coping, local volunteer detachments started forming in the regions of the Russian Federation. Numerous Russian Cossack formations fall into this category. In total, we can talk about 100 different volunteer units. Their sizes are difficult to estimate, normally they range from several companies to several battalions. The total number of troops recruited this way does not exceed 50,000 soldiers.
In parallel, the expansion of the regular army was underway, with recruits being virtually snapped from the street for short-term contracts of three months.
Military personnel had to be recruited for the war with Ukraine from occupation bases outside of Russia (South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria). Obituaries of these serviceman constantly appear in the press.
The war reached the remotest regions of the Russian Federation – Kuril Islands, Murmansk, Kaliningrad. In the navy, ship crewmen were coerced to switch to the marines.
With the beginning of the war, the first units of the so-called “private military companies” such as Wagner began to appear at the front. Prior to the full-scale invasion, these were rather specific detachments that were formed on the bases of or under the auspices of the GRU, their size varied from several battalions to a brigade. During active hostilities, they began to rely on recruiting masses of unprepared infantry. From July or August 2022, the first Wagner fighters recruited among prison convicts appeared at the front. Wagner PMC has had a very dynamic turnover, because its personnel was actively used as cannon fodder.
Heavy losses and ensuing acute military personnel shortage forced the Russians to announce a (partial) mobilization on September 22, which is legally still underway. It is difficult to estimate the number of military personnel involved through this mechanism.
The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs supplied both units of the Russian Guard during the early stage of the open invasion and later on combined police force detachments from the Russian regions.
The Ministry of Emergency Situations sent engineering and repair brigades, sapper brigades and rescuers to be involved in military operations.
The FSB sent Russian border guards and special operations squads to take part in the war. Even the Federal Guard Service sent its communication engineers and bodyguards to Ukraine to accompany top officials.
Representatives of all these military groups also suffered losses in the war against Ukraine. Now let’s figure out how to assess the losses of all these “Russians”.
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
Open sources provide information only about a part of the losses of the Russian Federation. The best researcher of this topic is the Ukrainian Twitter user nicknamed Necro Mancer who has been active since 2014. He analyzes only Russian losses. Over the past year, he added more than 8,000 obituaries of the Russian nationals to the database, indicating military units, places of death, and other data. Several tens of thousands more Russians are waiting for their turn. Mancer’s database is a very valuable source of the detailed and name-tagged data for understanding the Russian casualties.
BBC journalists have also picked up on this trend and have been scouring open sources, constantly updating their data. As of May 2023, they found more than 22,000 dead Russians. They are examining only Russian losses, that is, without the ersatz formations of the LPR/DPR. These studies analyze messages from the regional Russian press, social media posts, photographs of burials and posthumous decorations, memorial plaques, etc. This approach makes it possible to find only a part of the Russians for whom obituaries have surfaced in the press.
Losses among collaborators from the so-called LPR/DPR are not really monitored by anyone. That is, we cannot accurately single out the “Russian” part in the total losses reported by the General Staff of the AFU.
It should be noted that the representatives of the LPR/DPR suffered especially heavy losses in the Donbas in the first months of the war, because the Russians started using the 1st and 2nd ACs as cannon fodder long before the Wagnerites. These units from the “young republics” have had inferior technical equipment in comparison with the Russian regular army ever since 2014. Heavy losses in these units forced the Russians to accelerate the mobilization in the occupied territories of the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts. When this resource began to dry up, they had no other option, but to mobilize in the Russian Federation itself.
Missing in action
The obituaries analysis covers only those Russian losses that have been officially recognized. However, some of the losses are classified as missing in action (MIA). No traces of such losses can be found in open sources and obituaries, because officially they have not yet been declared dead. The question is which share of the body count reported by the AFU falls into this category.
For example, if we look at the war of the USSR in Afghanistan, we will get about 2-3%. However, Soviet regular army fought against partisans in Afghanistan.
In the First Chechen campaign, the share of the MIA reached 20% of the total losses. [1]
The Red Army statistics of the World War 2 would be more relevant here, where two regular armies fought with the active use of artillery and armored vehicles. In different periods of the war, the indicators were very different. At the beginning of the war, due to the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht, the ratio was almost 1:1. Whereas, at the end of the war, when the USSR was actively advancing, the ratio went down to about 12:1. If we take a figure somewhere between these extremes and consider the “notional” year 1943, then we will have a ratio of about 5:1. [2]
That is, most likely 15-20% of the KIA Russian military men are so far officially counted as MIA. The names of these military men have not made their way to any obituaries or memorial plaques in the lobbies of Russian schools. They were also not awarded any posthumous orders and medals.
And here we move to the specific method of calculating the losses of the Russian army based on the posthumous decorations.
Russian decorations (posthumous)
During the last war of the USSR in Afghanistan, the dead and gravely wounded soldiers received the Order of the Red Star. After the collapse of the USSR, the Russians replaced the Star with the new Order of Courage (1994). This order was awarded to those who were killed or gravely wounded in numerous Russian wars, as well as to those who “showed courage.” Also, the order was often given to senior officers, as a lesser tribute than the star of the Hero of Russia.
The order could also go to the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the firefighters and rescuers who “showed courage.” Sometimes this award was given to civilians, e.g. politicians, show business stars, or famous personalities. However, during active hostilities, the Order of Courage is normally given out to combatants, mainly posthumously or for severe wounds.
Decorations data
Starting from the first days of the war, we collected photographs of the Order of Courage decoration certificates. To date, we have gathered information on more than 550 awards issued since February 2022. These awards are issued by presidential orders classified as “top secret”, and they contain the lists for mass decorations of the Russian military men. Such orders are not published on the presidential kremlin.ru website.
During the 10 months of 2022, at least 72 such orders were signed. March 2022 was the first month when the practice of mass decorations began, with 11 presidential award orders issued during this month alone. Subsequently, the rhythm of signatures was optimized to let Putin sign such award orders every four days.
Interestingly, after the announcement of mobilization, the Russians changed the procedure for issuing military awards by order No. 722 of October 07, 2022. “In order to promptly solve the tasks of rewarding military personnel,” the commanders of groups of forces in the war zone got the powers to decorate on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation. Thus, the generals on the ground were able to quickly reward their subordinates.
The Order of Courage is special, as it is mainly issued posthumously or for grave wounds. Some of these awards are indeed given to the living for “shown courage”, but mostly to senior officers. The ratio of posthumous decorations to those issued to the living military men ranges from 4.5:1 to 5.5:1. This ratio held throughout the year, as the first 100/200/300/400 decoration certificates were found and analyzed. On average, for each Order of Courage issued to a living military man, 4-6 awards were given posthumously. At the beginning of the war, orders were more often issued posthumously, but the further the Russian army bogged down in the war, the more orders had to be distributed to encourage the living senior officers, so the share of posthumous decorations somewhat decreased. For simplicity and objectivity of calculations, we will take the minimum ratio of posthumous awards as 4 to 1.
The first mass decorations took place in March 2022, and the serial numbers of the decoration certificates started around 77,000. By the end of 2022 the serial numbers of the Orders of Courage reached about 117,000. That gives us a range of about 40,000 awards processed in a year.
The serial numbers are not issued linearly, that is, each subsequent issued order will not necessarily have a higher serial number. Most likely, different military districts or military units use their own numbering slots. Gradually, these slots run out, and new slots open up. In any case, serial numbers have been growing over time. In 2023, we still registered stray orders from the series of 948xx, 97xxx, but the upper numbering threshold has been gradually shifting upwards and has reached the level of 123500+.
We should factor in a couple of months that pass from the date of death to the issuance of the award. Those liquidated in February and March 2022 were decorated an average within 27-40 days. In the first months, the Russians were ready for mass awards and very quickly registered the first KIA. This was also facilitated by the format of hostilities, when the Russians were on the offensive, and their dead soldiers remained in their rear. Subsequently, the enlistment offices were “distracted” by the mobilization and were overwhelmed by the scale of casualties, so by the end of the year this figure increased to 55-60 days.
In addition, it can take from several weeks to several months after the date of decoration and before this information gets into the press. By the beginning of 2023, the military men who were KIA in the summer of 2022 were still surfacing in the press.
200,000 – how real are the Russian losses reported by the General Staff of the AFU?
In May 2023, the Russian KIA count, according to the General Staff of the AFU, exceeded 200,000. In turn, several other indicators appeared in the press this year:
- 180,000 killed and wounded as of 01/22/2023 – from the head of the Norwegian Armed Forces, General Eirik Kristoffersen.
- about 200,000 killed and wounded as of 02/02/2023 according to the NYT assessment of the Russian losses.
- 35,500-43,000 killed and 154,000-180,000 wounded as of February 2023 according to the “Pentagon leaks”.
These figures in the media do not really match up with the data of the General Staff of the AFU. So, who is more accurate?
As we see, up to 40,000 Orders of Courage were issued in 2022. Keeping in mind the ratio of posthumous awards (4.5-5.5: 1), we proceed from the estimation of about 32,000 liquidated Russian regular military men, who were apparently decorated in 2022. If we take into account the lag of 55-60 days from the liquidation to decoration, then this figure approximately matches the level of losses of the Russian army as of October or November 2022. This base assessment of the Russian army losses should be supplemented by Russian volunteers, as in the summer of 2022 they were not yet awarded the Orders of Courage, as well as rank-and-file members of the Wagner PMC, who are posthumously given only the Medal for Courage. Personnel of the LPR/DPR formations should also be added to the total figure, as they do not receive Russian posthumous awards at all.
The assessment formula as of October–November 2022 could look like this:
≈32,000 (regular Russian army / Russian Guard) + volunteers from Russia (BARS as of summer 22) + PMC Wagner + DPR/LPR + MIA
vs.
70,000-90,000 according to the General Staff of the AFU
It looks like the upper end of the assessed losses of the Russian regular forces from the “Pentagon leaks” as of February 2023 (43,000 = October–November + losses for another 2-3 months) may be accurate.
Most likely, the figures of the General Staff of the AFU are somewhat higher than the KIA count of the regular Russian army alone. Probably, this figure has not yet reached 200,000. However, if we consider the total losses of the combined Russian invasion forces (killed and wounded), then the indicators of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine would be a vast understatement.
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