Short answer: all the better Ukrainian brigades are fighting. It generally happens (for Russian brigades/regiments as well) that 1/2 maneuver battalions are in the tactical rear and the others are fighting. It’s not always easy to identify which battalion is fighting and which others are in the rear in a given brigade. In cases such as the 110th Mechanized Brigade in Avdiivka during the fall/winter, all its maneuver battalions were in battle. Generally, Ukrainian brigades (especially those engaged in the most difficult sectors) have 2/3 separate rifle battalions or territorial defense battalions attached to them (in some cases even more, as in the current case of the 47th Mechanized Brigade - in some cases battalions from a mech/tank brigade might be attached to other brigades too), to strengthen their combat capabilities and infantry endowment. The state border with Russia/Belarus is covered by TDF and separate rifle battalions, protection units of the National Guard, detachments of Border Guards, and some regular units (e.g. the new 13th Jager Brigade should be on the border with Belarus). But in general the amount of forces deployed there is not that large and they are often there for R&R purposes. Leaves are often handled on an individual basis, while rotations obviously occur at least at the company and generally at the battalion level.

During this week the detections of the “Poisk in UA” Telegram channel (which identifies Russian soldiers who fell in action, Russian POWs from interviews published by Ukrainian sources and publishes MIA notices, when they are accompanied by videos by their relatives/friends providing infos about their loved one + the complaints of Russian soldiers at the front) have returned to all-time highs: 1010 people, split into 988 KIAs and 22 POWs. That’s comparable to the week of February 26, 2024 (1011 people) and March 4, 2024 (1019 people), i.e. when the obituaries of the KIAs in the (very bloody) final phase of the battle of Avdiivka began arriving. MIA notices aren’t included in my table to avoid double counting in case they are later discovered as dead; in recent weeks they have stopped counting in a separate category the Wagnerites who are now discovered as KIA, over a year later (around a couple of dozen a week). Here I had elaborated more on the matter.

https://t.me/poisk_in_ua/57775

The coming weeks will tell whether this was a temporary spike or a further upward trend, following sustained Russian attacks in multiple sectors along the frontline. In any case, the amount of Russian losses has never been as high as in 2024, with an average of identified fatalities close to 800 per week. This confirms assessments that the war has never been as bloody as in recent months, which were in all likelihood even bloodier than the Donbas offensive of spring/summer 2022 and the Bakhmut/Soledar campaigns of fall/winter 2022/23.

A few days ago the French Foreign Minister stated that according to their estimations, the Russian KIAs during the war were 150,000 so far, which coincides exactly with my personal “educated guess” as of early May 2024 (as long as the figure also includes the MIAs, as well as those who fought for Russia in any rank: PMCs, convicts, mobilized men from D/LPR etc). That means an average of 190 per day since the beginning of the war. A death toll released by “Poisk in UA” close to 1000 per week (while the weekly average since the weekly amounts began getting published in January 2023 is about 600) is consistent with a daily number of KIAs + MIAs being between 300 and 350. I find it very likely that irretrievable losses according to Soviet jargon (KIAs, MIAs, WIAs unable to serve anymore, POWs - the last category being of very limited size in a historical comparison) are around or even a bit more than 20,000 per month, over the past three months. Which is in turn consistent with Ukrainian estimates of the Russian grouping deployed in Ukraine growing by an average of a handful of thousand servicemen per month over the past few months + a few thousand more, per month, going into the operational-strategic reserves being created in Russia; with Russia recruiting, through contracts, around 30 thousand men per month - a figure supported by both Russian and Ukrainian sources. Russia’s ability to absorb and sustain losses is undoubtedly better than Ukraine’s, due to the capability of recruiting a multiple amount of people per month, which allows it to replenish its ranks and also to create several new formations. But the amount of “spare” men at the end of each month isn’t that high, in spite of the undoubtedly generous monthly recruitment figure, because of the very high number of casualties.

I’m of the opinion that Russia’s pool of potentially recruitable men through contracts may still be somewhat large (and they could always further increase bonuses and wages, which over the last 6 months have been almost stagnant, compared to their previous upward trend), and if things get bad there’s always the opportunity for a new mobilization wave. Their losses are indeed very heavy, but not to a level really capable of socio-economically destabilizing the country, and we have to remember that the situation for Ukraine is not any better either, relative to their population.

There are absolutely cases of Cubans, Nepalese and Indians being recruited, often through deception. They are a very small part of the total number of soldiers, though. For Mediazona, the figures reported by CNN on the amount of Nepalese in the Russian Army were overstated; this BBC investigation reports of several hundred Cubans serving in the Russian Army. The vast majority of foreigners serving in the Russian Army, however, are citizens of Central Asian countries who already resided in Russia and sign contracts, almost always either as a result of economic hardship or as an alternative to facing criminal prosecutions for crimes they committed (there is such a possibility: signing a contract means that debts as well as criminal or administrative proceedings are suspended - leaving aside the possibility of joining the “Storm-V” penal units for those who are already in jail, which is another matter).

The Ukrainian observer Kovalenko had reported a while back that in the new 44th Corps of the Leningrad Military District the foreign nationals should account for around 10% of the total complement, a record number compared to the other formations.

The figure of 800 per week refers to numbers released by “Poisk in UA”, which include only the identified fatalities. Then you have to account for the MIAs and for the part of the KIAs, which is not small, that aren’t identified at all or are identified after a long time.

800 identified deaths per week easily means between 250 and 300 KIAs + MIAs per day, once you factor in that the daily average since the beginning of the war is around 190 and the average of the weekly KIA detections by “Poisk in UA” since they started publishing them is near 600.

The only one I know of is UALosses (and WarTears, but the latter doesn’t release evidence with photos or articles, etc. and looks suspect); the former should be generally reliable, net of several mistakes in data processing, but it doesn’t release detailed weekly data like “Poisk in UA". Its data are collected on a weekly basis, but according to the date of death (as Mediazona does, and not according to the date of publication), which is certainly very interesting for research purposes but makes much more complicated to try to track the “momentum” of losses on the short to medium term. Then if anyone knows about other sites/sources and wants to do an analysis similar to mine using them, they are absolutely welcome to do so.

It’s very difficult to try to discuss about ratios, but no, I don’t really think it has been more favorable to Ukraine than the ratio you reported, in the course of the war.

I don’t agree that the Russians use actual human waves, but advancing, especially with their methods/capabilities, is terribly expensive anyway in human (and material) terms. The argument about ethnic minorities personally leaves me a bit skeptical - if some minorities are much more likely to die compared to the average (Tuvans, Buryats…), others are considerably less so (Chechens, Dagestanis). The “median” Russian contract soldier is a poor and/or nationalist ethnic Russian from a region less wealthier than the national average.

Don’t worry, but I have no data to try to properly answer to this question.

I agree with you (and I also don’t think PMC Wagner used human waves in the actual sense of the term either; the Russians are definitely no longer outnumbered in terms of frontline troops, though). I did not write what you quoted in response to my comment and I think you are responding to the wrong person by mistake.