Russian casualties in Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine have surpassed 700,000, according to Kyiv, which trolled Moscow over the round number of such a grim milestone.
In its daily update, Ukraine's military said on Monday that over the previous day, Russian forces had suffered 1,300 personnel losses, taking the total number since the start of the full-scale invasion to 700,390.
"'Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.' Rene Descartes," Ukraine's defense ministry posted on X referring to the French philosopher.
"Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare."
Rene Descartes
The combat losses of the enemy from February 24, 2022 to November 4, 2024. pic.twitter.com/Q3Dlxd4u7R
Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment. An accurate number of casualties, which Ukraine says are "approximate" and include those who are both dead or injured, is difficult to ascertain, with both sides remaining tightlipped over their losses.
Russia has not updated its figures since September 2022 when it said that just under 6,000 had been killed, while Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said in February that 31,000 Ukrainian troops had died, although this was lower than Western estimates.
U.S. officials told The New York Times that September was the bloodiest month of the war since its start in February 2022 and that more than 600,000 were dead and wounded, with the spike caused by assaults in the east of Ukraine where Putin's forces have made slow gains but at a great cost in personnel.
An unnamed U.S. official cited by The New York Times said that more than 57,500 Ukrainian troops had been killed and 250,000 wounded.
Estonian intelligence estimated that Russia may have lost around 40,000 soldiers in October alone, a figure backed up by other estimates and higher than the 30,000 new soldiers that Ukrainian military intelligence believes are being recruited per month.
In its update in mid-October, independent Russian news outlet Mediazona said that 75,382 killed Russian troops had been identified, an increase of 2,483 since the start of the month.
The tally, in conjunction with BBC Russian, comes from verified information, public sources such as obituaries, posts by relatives, regional media reports, and statements from local authorities and given the level of evidence required, means that the real number is likely to be much higher.
Amid the growing casualties, the Kremlin has distributed a manual to soldiers on how to dig and maintain mass graves, filled with diagrams showing mass graves with body bags piled on top of one another, The Daily Telegraph reported.
It also detailed the equipment and manpower needed to dig a grave for 100 people which "under normal working conditions" would take 368.5 man hours.
The Telegraph said that the manual looked like an updated version of one published in 2021 and showed an emergency worker in a protective suit and helmet standing in front of a helicopter on the front cover.
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