17/4/24, 09:29 Russia's meat grinder soldiers - 50,000 confirmed dead

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Russia's meat grinder soldiers - 50,000

confirmed dead
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By Olga Ivshina, Becky Dale & Kirstie Brewer, BBC Russian

BBC

Russia's military death toll in Ukraine has now passed the 50,000 mark, the BBC can
confirm.
In the second 12 months on the front line - as Moscow pushed its so-called meat
grinder strategy - we found the body count was nearly 25% higher than in the first
year.
BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers have been
counting deaths since February 2022.
New graves in cemeteries helped provide the names of many soldiers.
Our teams also combed through open-source information from official reports,
newspapers and social media.

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More than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of combat - according to our
findings - a reflection of how territorial gains have come at a huge human cost.
Russia has declined to comment.
The term meat grinder has been used to describe the way Moscow sends waves of
soldiers forward relentlessly to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and expose their
locations to Russian artillery.
The overall death toll - of more than 50,000 - is eight times higher than the only official
public acknowledgement of fatality numbers ever given by Moscow in September
2022.
The actual number of Russian deaths is likely to be much higher.

Our analysis does not include the deaths of militia in Russian-occupied Donetsk and
Luhansk - in eastern Ukraine. If they were added, the death toll on the Russian side
would be even higher.
Ukraine, meanwhile, rarely comments on the scale of its battlefield fatalities. In
February, President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been
killed - but estimates, based on US intelligence, suggest greater losses.
Meat grinder tactics
The BBC and Mediazona's latest list of dead soldiers shows the stark human cost of
Russia's changing front-line tactics.
The graph below shows how the Russian military suffered a sharp spike in the number
of deaths in January 2023, as it began a large-scale offensive in the Donetsk region of
Ukraine.

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As Russians fought for the city of Vuhledar it used "ineffective human-wave style
frontal assaults", according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
"Challenging terrain, a lack of combat power, and failure to surprise Ukrainian forces",
it said, led to little gains and high combat losses.
Another significant spike in the graph can be seen in spring 2023, during the battle for
Bakhmut - when the mercenary group, Wagner, helped Russia capture the city.
Wagner's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, estimated his group's losses around that time to
be 22,000.
Russia's capture of the eastern-Ukrainian city Avdiivka last autumn also led to
another surge in military deaths.

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Counting graves
Volunteers working with the BBC and Mediazona have been counting new military
graves in 70 cemeteries across Russia since the war started.
Graveyards have been expanded significantly, aerial images show.
For example, these images of Bogorodskoye cemetery in Ryazan - to the south-east of
Moscow - show a whole new section has appeared.
Pictures and videos taken on the ground suggest most of these new graves belong to
soldiers and officers killed in Ukraine.

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The BBC estimates at least two in five of Russia's dead fighters are people who had
nothing to do with the country's military before the invasion.
At the start of the 2022 invasion, Russia was able to use its professional troops to
conduct complicated military operations - explains Samuel Cranny-Evans of the Royal
United Services Institute (Rusi).
But a lot of those experienced soldiers are now likely to be dead or wounded, says the
defence analyst, and have been replaced by people with little training or military
experience - such as volunteers, civilians and prisoners.
These people can't do what professional soldiers can do, explains Mr Cranny-Evans.
"This means they have to do things that are a lot simpler tactically - which generally
seems to be a forward assault onto Ukrainian positions with artillery support."

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Wagner v the defence ministry

Prison recruits are crucial to the success of the meat grinder - and our analysis
suggests they are now being killed quicker on the front line.
Moscow allowed Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to begin recruiting in prisons from
June 2022. The inmates-turned-fighters then fought as part of a private army on
behalf of the Russian government.
Wagner had a fearsome reputation for relentless fighting tactics and brutal internal
discipline. Soldiers could be executed on the spot for retreating without orders.
The group continued to recruit prisoners until February 2023, when its relationship
with Moscow began to sour. Since then, Russia's defence ministry has continued the
same policy.
Prigozhin staged an aborted mutiny against Russia's armed forces in June last year -
and tried to advance towards Moscow before agreeing to turn back. In August, he was
killed in a plane crash.

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Our latest analysis focused on the names of 9,000 Russian prison inmates who we
know were killed on the front line.
For more than 1,000 of them, we confirmed their military contract start dates and
when they were killed.
We found that, under Wagner, those former prisoners had survived for an average of
three months.
However, as the graph above suggests, those recruited later by the defence ministry
only lived for an average of two months.

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A tale of two soldiers: Can Ukraine actually win?

Ukrainecast - Frontline fighters on the Russian threat and the prospects for peace
Listen now on BBC Sounds

The ministry has created army units commonly known as Storm platoons, made up
almost entirely of convicts.
Similarly to Wagner's prisoner units, these detachments are reportedly often treated
as an expendable force thrown into battle.
"Storm fighters, they're just meat," one regular soldier, who had fought alongside
Storm members, told Reuters last year.
Recently, Storm fighters were instrumental in the months-long battle to capture
Avdiivka.
The city fell to Russia eight weeks ago and represented the biggest strategic and
symbolic battlefield victory for Putin since Bakhmut.

Prisoners sent straight to front line

Under Wagner, new prison fighters were given a fortnight of military training before
heading to the battlefield.
By contrast, we found some defence ministry recruits were killed on the front line in
the first two weeks of their contracts.
The BBC has spoken to families of prison recruits who died - and soldiers still alive -
who told us the military training offered to prison recruits by the defence ministry is
insufficient.
One widow told us her husband had signed his ministry contract in prison on 8 April
last year - and he was fighting on the front line three days later.
"I had been sure that there would be the few weeks of training they talk about. And
that there'd be nothing to fear until at least the end of April."

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She said she waited to hear from him - but found out that he had been killed on 21
April.

Military graves at Bakinskaya cemetery in southern Russia

Another mother says she only found out her husband had been taken from prison to
the battlefield when she tried to contact him about the death of their son, who had
also been fighting.
The woman, who we are calling Alfiya, says her 25-year-old son Vadim - a father of
twins - had never held a weapon before being mobilised.
She says she couldn't tell her husband Alexander about their son's death because he
had been "taken away" to fight. She only found out he had gone via a phone call from
another inmate.

Alexander grew up in Ukraine and had family there - says Alfiya - and he knew it was
"a lie" that Russia had invaded Ukraine to fight fascism. When army recruiters first
came to the prison "he sent them to hell," she says.

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Some seven months after the death of her son, Alfiya was informed that Alexander
had also been killed.

'Be ready to die'

When working for Wagner, prison inmates were typically contracted for six months.
The fighters - if they survived - would then be given their freedom at the end.
But, since last September, under the defence ministry, enlisted prisoners must fight
until they die or the war is over - whichever comes first.
The BBC has heard recent stories of prisoners asking relatives to help them buy proper
uniforms and boots. There have also been reports of inmates being sent to fight
without proper kit, medical supplies or even Kalashnikov guns.

"Many soldiers had rifles that were unsuitable for combat," writes Russian war
supporter and blogger Vladimir Grubnik, on his Telegram channel.
"What a foot soldier should do on the front line without a first aid kit, a spade to dig in
a trench and with a broken rifle is a big mystery!"

Reuters

Yevgeny Prigozhin, late chief of Russian private mercenary group Wagner

Grubnik - who is based in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine - claims when
commanders found out that some guns were "completely broken" they said it was
"impossible" for them to be replaced.
"The rifle was already assigned to the person, and the harsh military bureaucracy
couldn't do anything about it."

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Former prisoners have also described the high price paid by their comrades.
"If you sign up now, be ready to die, mate," says Sergei, in an online forum for Storm
fighters and their relatives, where information is shared.
He claims to be a former inmate who has been fighting in a Storm unit since October.
Another forum member says he joined a Storm platoon of 100 soldiers five months
ago and is now one of just 38 still alive.
"Every combat mission is like being born again."

Russia doesn’t count its war dead, so we did - June 2023

War in Ukraine Russia Military Ukraine

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