Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien
Russian loss rates, with the present evidence, are already reaching levels that compare to some of the worst losses of the US Civil War or World War I.
What do we know? According to the US briefing today about 40 out of 130 BTGs have been so thoroughly wrecked that they are not functional and have been withdrawn entirely. This loss rate of approx 30% seems to be mirrored in overall Russian casualties (maybe an underestimate)
The Ukrainians are claiming that 19,500 Russian soldiers have been killed. Other sources have not estimated for a bit. However if about 30% of BTGs have been rendered inoperable, and you include losses in other services (marines, spetznaz, airborne) 19.5k is not a bad baseline
If you simply double the amount of killed to take into account wounded, prisoners, etc, and add together you get almost 60,000 in total, which would be 30% of the original invasion force. This seems all seems plausible. Could be 5K more or less, but lets use that as a comparison.
Compare this to the US Civil War. The general with the highest average casualty rates was none other than Robert E. Lee. His troops suffered around 20% casualties on their campaigns--so the Russians are already far higher than that.
World War I. The Battle of the Somme as a comparison. The British, French and Germans deployed about 3.5 million soldiers combined and lost about 1,050,000 casualties. Guess that rate--30%. So the Russians are already at Battle of Somme casualties.
And the Battle of the Somme lasted more than 3 months (late June through late September 1916) so the losses in this famous battle occurred in twice the time that is has taken the Russians to lose so much.
Now for a World War II comparison--the German Army in the Battle of Kursk, what is often seen as the greatest armor battle in history. While German losses are actually not easy to calculate, by any measures the Russian Army in Ukraine is suffering more losses.
During the 6 weeks of Operation Citadel and the subsequent Soviet counteroffensive the Germans suffered between 160k-200k casualties of the more than 900k soldiers deployed. this is somewhere between 17% and 22%
So Russian losses by historic comparison are massive. Higher than German losses in the Kursk Campaign, higher than Robert E. Lee's campaign average and equal to the Battle of the Somme (in half the time).
In all these cases, the armies were exhausted a needed to cease operations and recover. I would imagine this occurs soon to the Russians. They might have one real effort left in them--but hard to see how they could keep going.
And say I’ve overestimated Russian casualties by 50% and they are ‘only’ 40k as opposed to 60k. This would put them exactly at German Kursk and Robert E Lee casualty rates. That’s still debilitating
A good guess as to why the Russians would be using chemical weapons in Mariupol (if confirmed) is that their losses are so high, Russian soldiers arent willing to expose themselves any more in combat.
Institute for the Study of War showing how Russian losses are already causing major problems. Troops being bribed or previously ineligible troops being conscripted. Russia is not a bottomless well of soldiers people. This is not World War 2.