How many Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine? It’s tough to know. We have Ukrainian sources saying their land has become a killing field for Russian forces, with at least 11,000 killed since the start of the war. It is true that the Russian offensive has become stuck in the mud. Tanks are running out of gas. That 40-mile Russian convoy outside of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv has yet to move. What’s going on? Other estimates of the Russian war dead are in the 4,000-6,000 range which is probably a tad more accurate. Still, that’s more Russians killed in less than two weeks in Ukraine than all American losses during the entirety of the Iraq War and occupation. The Ukrainians are holding on, mounting a dogged defense against a superior adversary. We’ll see how long that lasts after the Russians clinch air superiority which they have so far been unable to do.
Yet, let’s circle back to the 10,000-plus Russian war dead figure. Keep an eye on it. We have reports of hospitals in southern Belarus that are totally filled with Russian bodies. There’s allegedly not enough refrigeration. Bodies are starting to rot. This also takes us back to the story about the Russian military wheeling in mobile crematoriums to cook the books on their casualty rates. We may never know the true death toll. There’s also the suspicion that mass graves for dead Russian soldiers are also being dug to hide the true body counts.
The #Russian Service of BBC writes that they have information about what is happening in the Mozyr morgue
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 11, 2022
Earlier, Belarusian and #Ukrainian independent media reported that hospitals in southern #Belarus were allegedly overfilled with the bodies of the Russian soldiers.
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“The bodies are not even taken to a refrigerator, but to an ordinary room - 5x5 m2, they are stored there for a while, they rot, stink - then bodies are taken away somewhere.”
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 11, 2022
“The soldiers themselves do this everything is guarded only the head of the department has access.”
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According to his BBC source, "no one knows how many dead bodies there are, but everyone is horrified by what's happening. Doctors think that somewhere there is a mobile crematorium or they just bury them somewhere".
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 11, 2022
We’ll see how this turns out. There’s propaganda flying on both sides, and in a region of the world where media is heavily controlled by the state—take certain things slowly. Russian intelligence officials have warned that their military is heading for total disaster in Ukraine. The Russian operation has been less than stellar. They are taking heavy losses. How heavy remains to be determined. If these reports are true, the death toll for Russia has been catastrophic.