On the headquarters of Russian navy unit 51460 within the Far Jap area of Khabarovsk, a memorial wall devoted to the fallen troopers of the unit, identified extra extensively because the sixty fourth Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, was erected not way back.
In all, 44 troopers and officers are proven on the wall, in accordance with {a photograph} that was initially posted to the Russian social media website VK and confirmed by RFE/RL.
The wall doesn’t say the place they have been killed, solely that they have been all awarded the distinguished Order of Braveness. Aleksei Astashov, the person who posted the {photograph}, instructed RFE/RL the place: Kyiv, Izyum, and Slovyansk in Ukraine, the place Russia’s invasion is in its sixth month and the place Western intelligence says Russia has suffered extra deaths than it did in your complete decade of the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan within the Nineteen Eighties.
“Everybody went to the SVO,” Astashov instructed RFE/RL, utilizing the acronym for “particular navy operation,” the euphemism the Kremlin has insisted on utilizing when discussing the conflict in Ukraine.
Everybody, he mentioned in a chat dialog through VK, “besides for women, workers mice, and new recruits.” Workers mice is a colloquial time period for administrative and clerical workers.
That is 95 p.c of the unit’s officers and contract troopers, together with “semi-conscripts” who signed the contracts below duress, he mentioned.
“Many have been transferred to Ukraine straight from workouts in neighboring Belarus,” he mentioned.
In keeping with Astashov, the scale of the brigade when it deployed was about 1,500 troops. The entire variety of useless, by Astashov’s estimate: “Not less than a number of hundred.”
Russia’s conflict on Ukraine has rewritten the safety order of Europe, reworking alliances, prompting main redeployments of Western navy models, scrambling the worldwide financial system, and hastening Russia’s descent into authoritarianism.
It has additionally uncovered obvious weaknesses in Russia’s armed forces, with Russian models struggling terribly excessive attrition charges.
Formally, Russia’s Protection Ministry has launched solely partial tallies of conflict losses, the final on March 25, when it introduced 1,351 useless and three,825 wounded.
Final month, nevertheless, CIA Director William Burns estimated Russian losses have been at the least 15,000 killed and about 45,000 wounded, a determine echoed on August 8 by Colin Kahl, U.S. undersecretary of protection for coverage.
“I believe it is protected to counsel that the Russians have most likely taken 70,000 to 80,000 casualties in lower than six months,” Kahl instructed reporters. “Now, that may be a mixture of killed in motion and wounded in motion, and that quantity could be a little bit decrease, a little bit increased. However I believe that is sort of within the ballpark, which is fairly outstanding contemplating that the Russians have achieved none of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s aims at first of the conflict.”
The sixty fourth Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade could be the clearest instance of this.
‘The Motherland And The Pursuits Of The State’
Primarily based within the Khabarovsk area, roughly 9,000 kilometers to the east of Ukraine, the rifle brigade was reorganized as a regiment within the Nineteen Nineties, and components of it have been deployed to battle in Chechnya throughout the first conflict there within the Nineteen Nineties. It was upgraded to a brigade-level unit within the late 2000s.
The unit gained international notoriety after Russian models withdrew from districts north of Kyiv in late March, repelled of their offensive towards the Ukrainian capital.
A number of districts, together with the city of Bucha, have been the websites of mass killings of civilians and different alleged conflict crimes, in accordance with Ukrainian investigators, rights teams, journalists, and open-source researchers. Ukraine’s Protection Ministry accused the brigade, which was deployed to Bucha and close by places, of atrocities.
On August 8, Bucha authorities mentioned that they had tallied 458 our bodies recovered within the city, of which 419 appeared to have been shot, tortured, or suffered blunt-force accidents.
Weeks after stories of the massacres first appeared, on April 18, Putin honored the sixty fourth for defending the “motherland and the pursuits of the state.” He praised it for “mass heroism and valor, tenacity, and braveness.”
In keeping with the dates listed on the memorial wall on the sixty fourth Brigade camp, about 20 minutes outdoors of Khabarovsk, at the least 44 troopers from the unit died in late February and March — a interval coinciding with the primary part of the Russian invasion, when Russian forces sought to grab Kyiv.
Different dates match up with a later offensive, after Russian commanders withdrew the sixty fourth Brigade and different models from north of Kyiv and redeployed forces to the jap Donbas area, together with close to Kharkiv.
In keeping with the dates on the memorial wall, seven troopers from the sixty fourth Brigade have been killed on April 25. That date coincides with a report by Ukraine’s Basic Workers on the identical day saying that Russian troops “tried to hold out assault actions” within the instructions “Izyum-Barvinkove” and “Izyum-Slovyansk.”
Every week previous to that assault, a contract soldier from the sixty fourth Brigade named Aleksandr Rostovsky additionally died. On-line memorial bulletins honoring him mentioned he died on April 18 close to Izyum.
‘Do not Fear. I Love You. I Kiss You.’
In all, RFE/RL was in a position to corroborate the deaths of 30 out of the 44 troopers featured on the memorial wall utilizing publicly obtainable info from official publications, social media, and media stories.
One such on-line announcement, revealed on VK, is named “Memorial to the Lifeless Transbaikalians” — a reference to the southern Siberian area bordered on the west by Lake Baikal, on the south by the Mongolian border, and to the east by the Amur area.
A publish dated Could 14, written in honor of 20-year-old Corporal Vladislav Vedernikov, included a textual content message from his mom:
“He studied in Khabarovsk. He had already completed grade 11, and he was taking exams. However then they introduced they’d go to Belarus. There they dug trenches, and the final time he referred to as was from Chernobyl,” her publish mentioned.
On February 23, she wrote, her son despatched a textual content message saying his unit was being transferred, that every one telephones have been being taken away, and that there can be no extra communication. “‘Don’t be concerned. I really like you. I kiss you,'” she quoted him as saying.
“On March 3, their column got here below hearth from two sides. The battle went on for 2 days. A fraction hit him within the leg. They introduced some entire [bodies]; others have been collected solely in components. He died within the Kyiv area, in Borodyanka,” the publish mentioned.
KIA, MIA, POW
Russia’s excessive price of useless and wounded has been attributed to a number of elements, in accordance with navy specialists.
Ukrainian forces have waged pitched battles defending not solely the areas north of Kyiv, however different places, together with within the Donbas and the Azov Sea port of Mariupol, which Ukraine finally was compelled to cede after a months-long siege.
Ukraine’s protection has been considerably bolstered by the inflow of subtle Western weaponry that has changed dwindling Soviet-era shares and has modified the capabilities of its armed forces.
North of Kyiv, within the early days of the conflict, Ukrainian troops made efficient use of anti-tank missiles, such because the U.S.-built Javelin and the British NLAW, to pummel Russian tanks and different armored automobiles.
Different Russian weaknesses embody a scarcity of correct medical tools and trendy methods and procedures for rapidly treating and evacuating battlefield accidents.
After Russia’s retreat from the Kyiv area, many models had been decimated, in accordance with U.S. navy officers and out of doors specialists. In keeping with some estimates, some Russian models misplaced as much as one-third of their personnel.
Michael Kofman, a longtime skilled on the Russian navy on the U.S.-based Heart for Naval Evaluation, has roughly estimated that for each Russian soldier killed, there have been seemingly about 3.5 wounded.
Yury Fedorov, a Russian navy skilled, estimated the entire personnel of the sixty fourth Brigade, which incorporates two motorized rifle battalions and one tank battalion, was about 2,500 earlier than the conflict.
“The sixty fourth Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade is from the Far Jap Army District, and there many models have been severely weakened and poorly outfitted,” he instructed RFE/RL. “Typically they have been merely lower in half. For instance, there are two kind of totally manned battalions and the remainder are only a few officers and ensigns.
“In the event that they obtain further personnel, then they need to settle for them, prepare them, lead them, and go into battle with them,” he mentioned.
“This can be a widespread apply: If troops are badly battered, then some new consolidated brigades are constructed from the remaining items of 1 or one other unit,” Fedorov mentioned. “To be able to be combat-ready, such brigades must undergo the method of fight coordination. Platoon and firm commanders should get to know one another, debug communication channels. This takes at the least a number of months.”
The sixty fourth Brigade, nevertheless, can’t be disbanded, he argued, as a result of doing so would undermine the dignity bestowed upon it by Putin.
“To disband it means to acknowledge the accountability of this brigade for the crimes in Bucha,” Fedorov mentioned. “Subsequently, most probably, new contract troopers and conscripts will probably be despatched to the remaining officers.”
Different analysts on the Battle Intelligence Group investigative group say the casualty estimate supplied by Astashov was believable, however provided that the determine was restricted to contract troopers.
Different elements that specialists have blamed for Russia’s excessive casualty price embody poor morale and poor self-discipline, significantly among the many decrease ranks and noncommissioned officers.
Astashov, who works in a medical unit with the sixty fourth Brigade, instructed RFE/RL that at the least 100 troopers — so-called “refuseniks” — could have refused to battle in Ukraine, significantly after the preliminary battlefield defeats suffered by Russian forces.
“As in January, they have been despatched to Belarus for workouts after which again to Ukraine, however nobody allow them to out” to go house or go on go away, he wrote in a prolonged VK dialog earlier than he blocked an RFE/RL reporter from speaking additional and switched his VK web page to the “friends-only” setting.
“Actually, there was no rotation in any respect,” he mentioned. “There have been at the least 100 ‘refuseniks,’ not after the primary defeats, however after many [lies] on the a part of commanders. The boys are uninterested in the depth of preventing and motion, of the length of the deployment, and the backdrop of uncertainty.”
