As Russia closes in on the staggering milestone of 1.5 million casualties, Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has become one of the costliest military failures in modern history. With elite forces depleted, the Kremlin relies on poorly trained volunteers, convicts, and street roundups to sustain a grueling 8:1 casualty ratio against Ukraine. At a crawling rate of advance, see how Putin’s obsession is consuming an entire generation of Russian soldiers for negligible gains.
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Russian Army Nears 1.5 Million Casualty Milestone
01:15 - Ukrainian Finance Ministry Reports 1,462,970 Russian Losses
02:30 - Calculating the Date Russia Crosses 1.5M Casualties
03:45 - GCHQ, CSIS, and Mediazona Casualty Estimates Compared
05:15 - Russia's Casualty Ratio Skyrockets to 8 to 1 Against Ukraine
06:45 - How Ukrainian Ground Robots and Drones Reduce Personnel Losses
08:00 - Destruction of Elite Spetsnaz, Paratrooper, and Marine Units
09:30 - Russia Recruits 180,000 Convicts from Prisons for Frontlines
11:00 - Kremlin Offers $22,200 Signing Bonuses to Recruit Volunteers
12:30 - Recruits Receive Only 10 Days of Training Before Combat
14:00 - Forced Conscription on Streets of Penza and Omsk
15:30 - North Korean and African Foreign Mercenaries Deployed
17:00 - Putin Prepares 500,000 Mass Mobilization for Prolonged War
18:30 - Russian Advances Slow to 37.85 Square Kilometers Monthly
20:00 - Demographic Collapse and FSB Power Expansion in Russia
21:45 - Putin Refuses Peace Negotiations at St. Petersburg Forum
23:15 - Will Mass Casualties Cause the Ruin of the Russian Empire?
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SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/VjHQzdiX
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Russian Army Nears 1.5 Million Casualty Milestone
01:15 - Ukrainian Finance Ministry Reports 1,462,970 Russian Losses
02:30 - Calculating the Date Russia Crosses 1.5M Casualties
03:45 - GCHQ, CSIS, and Mediazona Casualty Estimates Compared
05:15 - Russia's Casualty Ratio Skyrockets to 8 to 1 Against Ukraine
06:45 - How Ukrainian Ground Robots and Drones Reduce Personnel Losses
08:00 - Destruction of Elite Spetsnaz, Paratrooper, and Marine Units
09:30 - Russia Recruits 180,000 Convicts from Prisons for Frontlines
11:00 - Kremlin Offers $22,200 Signing Bonuses to Recruit Volunteers
12:30 - Recruits Receive Only 10 Days of Training Before Combat
14:00 - Forced Conscription on Streets of Penza and Omsk
15:30 - North Korean and African Foreign Mercenaries Deployed
17:00 - Putin Prepares 500,000 Mass Mobilization for Prolonged War
18:30 - Russian Advances Slow to 37.85 Square Kilometers Monthly
20:00 - Demographic Collapse and FSB Power Expansion in Russia
21:45 - Putin Refuses Peace Negotiations at St. Petersburg Forum
23:15 - Will Mass Casualties Cause the Ruin of the Russian Empire?
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#themilitaryshow
SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/VjHQzdiX
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NewsTranscript
00:01They should put Vladimir Putin in the Guinness Book of World Records.
00:04But what for, we wonder.
00:06Largest number of dumb decisions made in a single military conflict, perhaps.
00:11He'd be a frontrunner for that one.
00:12How about most excuses made for starting a war, none of which makes sense?
00:17That would be a lock.
00:18Still, if we had to pick just one record that enshrines Putin and gives him the legacy that he deserves,
00:23it would have to be this one.
00:25Most Russian soldiers sacrificed to serve an insane war with no real purpose.
00:31That seems like the perfect fit.
00:32The numbers are brutal.
00:34The justifications are insane.
00:36And the worst of all is that this is a record that will only keep on growing
00:40until Putin's obsessive campaign against Ukraine is brought to an end.
00:44We'll hit you with the most important number first.
00:46As of August 13th, Russia has lost 1,462,970 soldiers to death, injury or capture.
00:57That's according to Ukraine's Ministry of Finance,
00:59which has exposed the true scale of the losses that Russia has experienced
01:03in service of Putin's insane desire to subjugate Ukraine.
01:07Soon, Russia will reach the point where it's experienced 1.5 million casualties,
01:11which is a staggering figure for a single nation in a conflict not seen since the Soviet Union
01:16played its role in defeating the Nazi scourge during World War II.
01:20At least back then, the massive casualties that Russia absorbed had a purpose.
01:25Hitler had to be stopped and Russia played a heroic role.
01:27But the Ukraine war isn't about stopping a murderous ideologue.
01:31It's about serving one.
01:33Russia's war in Ukraine has no purpose other than satisfying Putin's twisted view of history,
01:38as he attempts to secure his legacy as one of the most important Russian leaders of all time.
01:43He'll certainly go down in history as important, just not in the way that he wants.
01:48We are just days away from Russia reaching another milestone that will secure Putin's record
01:53for most Russian soldiers' sacrifice to serve an insane war with no real purpose.
01:57How many days?
01:58A little bit of napkin maths will give us the answer.
02:00As of the August 13th figure we just shared, Russia is 37,000 soldiers away from losing
02:061.5 million in the fight against Ukraine.
02:09Now, we need a daily casualty figure.
02:11Let's use Russia's July numbers for that.
02:14According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russia suffered 42,860 casualties in July,
02:21which is the highest monthly rate since the beginning of 2026.
02:24Divide that by 31 days in July and you get daily casualties of about 1,382 troops.
02:31From there, the maths is easy.
02:3337,030 divided by 1,382 gives us just under 27 days before Russia hits the 1.5 million milestone.
02:4226.8 days to be exact.
02:44That means Russia is likely to reach 1.5 million casualties just after the first week of September,
02:50marking yet another humiliation for what is supposed to be one of the world's strongest military powers.
02:56Now, there are some alternate figures for us to consider here.
02:59The numbers we've used come from Ukraine,
03:01and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, roughly agrees with them.
03:06Other outlets don't, though there are plenty of caveats attached to their figures.
03:10For example, the UK's GCHQ spy agency estimated back in May
03:14that around 500,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in action.
03:20We see the caveat immediately, this figure only incorporates soldiers who have died
03:23and doesn't count casualties or captures.
03:26It's certainly not outside the realm of possibility that GCHQ would offer up a figure
03:31close to Ukraine's if it considered all casualties.
03:34In fact, that's what the CSIS did.
03:36It claims Russia has suffered about 450,000 battlefield deaths,
03:40but it's reached its own estimate of about 1.4 million by adding wounded and captured soldiers.
03:45MediaZona, along with the BBC Russia service, offers a much lower estimate.
03:50It says that 236,066 Russian soldiers have died since Putin launched his invasion.
03:56Again, we have the killed rather than total casualties caveat at play.
04:00But there's another thing to consider with this particular figure.
04:03All of these 236,066 deaths have been confirmed via publicly available sources,
04:10such as obituaries, media reports and social media posts made by relatives of the deceased.
04:15That means the MediaZona figures don't cover those that Russia has claimed are missing in action
04:20when they've actually been killed.
04:21Plus, there will be plenty of soldiers who died without fanfare that have escaped its notice.
04:26With all of this context, almost 1.5 million is absolutely believable.
04:32Russia is losing soldiers at a ridiculous rate, and it's only getting worse with time.
04:37Just look at its casualty ratio with Ukraine as an example.
04:40According to a July 2nd Stars and Stripes report,
04:44the casualty rate between Russia and Ukraine for most of the war
04:46has been two Russian casualties for every one Ukrainian,
04:50sometimes rising to three Russians for one Ukrainian.
04:53It's not like that anymore.
04:54Not by a long shot.
04:56As more of Russia's experienced soldiers have been taken out
04:59to be replaced by inexperienced cannon fodder,
05:02Russia's losses compared to Ukraine's have skyrocketed.
05:05Now, Russia is losing eight soldiers for every one Ukrainian.
05:10The big question now is how did it get so bad for Russia?
05:13It would be easy to point to Ukraine's expanding use of drones,
05:16which increasingly helped to keep soldiers off the front lines and call it a day.
05:20And indeed, Ukraine's drones and robots do play a massive role in what we're seeing.
05:24A flood of FPV and mid-range strike drones rampaging through the kill zones Ukraine has created
05:29is taking Russian soldiers out before they get close to the front.
05:33Plus, Ukraine is increasingly using ground robot systems for frontline missions,
05:38which has reduced personnel casualties by up to 30% per the Modern War Institute at West Point.
05:44However, not even all of this explains the disparity that's at play now.
05:48Russia isn't just losing record-breaking amounts of soldiers.
05:51It's losing more as Ukraine loses less.
05:54And there's a big reason why.
05:55We'll reveal the reason in just a moment.
05:57First, you are watching the military show.
05:59If this is the kind of insight that you want to see,
06:01make sure that you are subscribed to the channel and have notifications enabled.
06:06We deliver videos like this every single day.
06:09To truly understand how things have gotten so bad for Russia,
06:12we need to take a trip back in time to February 2022.
06:16Putin and his cronies had been planning what was about to happen for a long time,
06:20even as they told bald-faced lies to the rest of the world.
06:24Finally, the big day was here.
06:26Russia was about to invade.
06:27And the plan was to smash through Ukraine's defenses to reach Kiev in a matter of days.
06:32To ensure that plan came to fruition, Putin was going to deploy elite operatives,
06:37both from Russia's military and its mercenary groups such as Wagner.
06:41February 24th came.
06:43Russian soldiers crossed the border.
06:46And for a couple of days, they made progress.
06:48Large swathes of Ukraine's south and east were occupied.
06:51Russia even managed to grab territory close to Kiev,
06:54coming within about 30 kilometers of Ukraine's capital.
06:57Then something changed.
06:58Ukraine's resistance forces organized, and they started to bat Russia back.
07:02Within a few weeks, Russian troops were being pushed out of territory they had occupied.
07:06A few more weeks later, Western support started pouring in.
07:10Russian soldiers were dying by the thousands,
07:12and the front lines, which have changed far too little for Putin's liking in the years since, were established.
07:17The early months of the war set the stage for everything that has come since,
07:21and it all comes down to the elite operators that we mentioned.
07:24In his search for a quick victory in February 2022,
07:27Russia deployed its best professional soldiers.
07:30It was these experienced and more talented Russian troops
07:33that were among the early casualties of the war.
07:36And with each actual soldier that went down to Ukrainian fire, or later drones,
07:41Russia was forced to scramble for replacements.
07:44After a while, it wasn't professional soldiers that were being sent into Ukraine.
07:48It was anybody that Putin could get his hands on
07:50who was willing to take the money just to be sent into the meat grinder.
07:54We saw this as early as the second half of 2022.
07:57That's when the balance tipped for Russia's casualty rate,
08:00going from mostly professional soldiers dying for Putin's war,
08:03to mostly volunteers, Newsweek reports.
08:05That was the start of Russia's climb to 1.5 million casualties,
08:10the loss of the professionals, and the rise and constant falls of the volunteers.
08:15Russia still has a major specialization problem in its military,
08:19as Small Wars Journal highlighted in an April 21st piece.
08:23The journal says that 8,500 of Russia's trained paratroopers
08:27have been wounded since the war began,
08:28and around half of the 30,000 airborne troops it had at the start of the war
08:33are either dead or injured.
08:34The same outlet says that Russia has lost 2,218 of its marines
08:39in four years of fighting in Ukraine,
08:41which is roughly equivalent to the number the US lost in 20 years in Afghanistan.
08:47And of the 900 Spetsnaz operators that Russia initially sent into Ukraine,
08:52775 were either killed or wounded so severely that they couldn't return to combat.
08:57This is all bad enough,
08:58but to support Putin's approach to warfare,
09:00Russia has been both replacing these elite forces
09:03and bulking up its infantry with people who have no real business being in a war zone.
09:08There are the criminals for a start.
09:10As it became clear to the Kremlin that Ukraine wasn't going to crumble,
09:13it started recruiting from the worst of the worst in Russian society.
09:17There's a twisted logic here.
09:19If somebody is willing to kill or maim inside Russia,
09:22they'll love the opportunity to do the same to Ukrainian soldiers,
09:25and they definitely won't run away at the first sign of potential freedom.
09:29Sarcasm aside,
09:30Russia had reportedly recruited a staggering 180,000 convicts for the war in Ukraine
09:36by January 2025,
09:38per Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service.
09:41It wasn't enough.
09:42Who knew that sending barely trained criminals into a war wouldn't produce results?
09:46Russia apparently looks on the bright side
09:48and sees its prison recruitment strategy as a way to make space in the gulags.
09:53That's the only explanation we can come up with for why on July 22nd,
09:57Russia expanded its convict recruitment net,
10:00allowing drug traffickers, gang members, and bandits to sign up for the fight.
10:04You're probably already seeing the theme here.
10:07A convict who is barely trained isn't a professional soldier.
10:10That convict is cannon fodder,
10:12like the many thousands of others who have already been recruited,
10:16and they almost inevitably add to the casualties that Russia is experiencing.
10:20But what about the volunteers?
10:22Yes, Russia isn't just pulling soldiers out of prisons to serve as Putin's patsies.
10:26Recruiters in every Russian region are dangling golden carrots in front of the faces of everyday people.
10:31Those carrots come in the form of massive signing bonuses and wages that are several times higher than the Russian
10:38average,
10:39all to sign their lives away with the military.
10:41The vast majority of the soldiers who Russia has in Ukraine right now are volunteers
10:45who have been tempted by the Kremlin's offers, or in some cases, haven't been given a choice.
10:50And it's also no surprise that volunteers make up the largest portion of Russian casualties,
10:55and have done so since the second half of 2022.
10:58Still, they sign up, as Russia keeps upping the money offered.
11:02According to the Kyiv Post, Russia isn't just paying its contract soldiers crazy money.
11:06It's also giving up to $22,200 to the people who recruit those soldiers.
11:11Such is the Kremlin's desperation to keep the bodies flowing into Ukraine.
11:15As for the soldiers themselves, they can get signing bonuses of a similar amount in several Russian regions,
11:21along with those high wages we talked about.
11:23Dangle those sorts of offers in front of people who are down on their luck,
11:27and see no other way to make anything like the money the Kremlin will pay,
11:30and you get a ready-made pipeline of soldiers.
11:33The only problem is that the theme we mentioned before comes back into play.
11:37Russia is losing troops in Ukraine so quickly,
11:40that it needs to rush its volunteers to the front as soon as possible.
11:43You can imagine what this means when it comes to training.
11:47Russia's volunteer soldiers aren't getting enough of it,
11:50so the only reason why you would call them professional is that they're getting paid.
11:54They certainly don't have the skills of those whom Russia has already lost.
11:58I find myself being surprised with the new depths of how poor the Russian individual's soldier quality is,
12:03said George Barros, who is a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War back in September 2024.
12:09The standard has only lowered in the two years since.
12:13A July 2026 report by Business Insider revealed that the average Russian recruit lives for between 10 days and 3
12:20weeks
12:20after arriving at their training grounds.
12:22That gives them a maximum of 3 weeks training before being sent into the drone-infested kill zones,
12:27and likely much less than that.
12:30The latest batches of so-called volunteers are going to do even worse.
12:34In an August 12th report, RBC Ukraine said that people are now being rounded up on the streets of Pensa
12:39and Omsk to be sent to Ukraine.
12:42Recruiters target vulnerable people, such as those who have been drinking,
12:46detain them, and then send them to military selection points where they are coerced into signing contracts.
12:50So not only are they forced to go through training with hangovers,
12:54but they don't even want to be there in the first place.
12:57No wonder those soldiers are dying in droves.
12:59It's that theme again, no professionals, only warm bodies.
13:03And don't forget the foreign fighters.
13:05According to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy,
13:07up to 50,000 North Korean troops are set to be deployed on Russian soil,
13:11serving in rear rolls until they inevitably find their way to the front.
13:15That's on top of the 14,000 or so that North Korea sent to Russia back in 2024
13:20to help Putin retake territory in Kursk that Ukraine had occupied in a counter-invasion.
13:26Africa also isn't immune to Russian recruiting.
13:29Ukraine's Stop Russian Recruiters platform has identified almost 3,000 people from African nations
13:35who have ended up in Ukraine, about a sixth of whom have already died.
13:39So not only does Russia have poorly trained criminals and volunteers making up most of its army,
13:44but also has troops who don't speak the right language and have never seen real combat before.
13:49At this point, we don't need to tell you how Russia has ended up on the brink of 1.5
13:54million casualties.
13:55It's blindingly obvious.
13:57And what Putin doesn't see as he builds on his unique little record
14:00is that he's setting up his entire nation for a dramatic fall,
14:05all so that he can continue the fight in Ukraine.
14:07There is already talk that Putin is preparing to mobilize 500,000 Russians,
14:12and the Kremlin has already put the legal mechanisms into place to allow him to do it.
14:17The approach of stealing people from the streets is going to expand pretty massively if Putin follows through,
14:22and yet more of the most unfortunate generation of Russians since the 1940s will end up dead.
14:28With this one move, Putin will signal his intention to drag Russia into many more years of war with Ukraine.
14:35And believe it when we say years.
14:36In July, Russian forces only managed to advance 37.85 square kilometers per figures from the Institute for the Study
14:44of War.
14:45This is territory confirmed to be captured,
14:48so it doesn't include places where Russia has managed to infiltrate a handful of soldiers
14:52who are just waiting to be hunted down by Ukraine.
14:54Let's put that into some context.
14:57Ukraine isn't a small country.
14:59It measures about 603,550 square kilometers,
15:04of which Russia has managed to occupy 20%, including Crimea.
15:08Take that 20% away and you have 482,840 square kilometers of Ukraine left to capture.
15:16Russia managed 37.85 square kilometers in a month,
15:20and that was one of its best months since April.
15:23At its current rate of advance, it would take Russia 12,756 months to take the rest of Ukraine,
15:30or about 1,000 years.
15:32Not exactly a time frame that will appeal to Putin,
15:35which is why he's looking to mobilize.
15:36He needs to speed things up so there's at least a small chance
15:40that Russia might defeat Ukraine while he's still alive,
15:42and can revel in the glory of his victory.
15:44A glory that has already cost Russia close to 1.5 million people,
15:49ruined an entire generation,
15:51and will require millions more casualties to make a reality.
15:55Think about what Russia has already become in 2026.
15:59Corruption runs rampant, the economy is in tatters,
16:02Russia faces a demographic decline that already looked bad before Ukraine,
16:06and is looking even worse now,
16:08and the empire that Putin is trying to create has crumbled.
16:11Russia is losing influence all over the world,
16:14and Russia itself has descended even deeper into being a surveillance state,
16:18all to serve Putin as he descends deeper into his own paranoia.
16:22The FSB, which now has almost no limits and holds more power than Putin himself,
16:27is setting Russia up for a future where any leaders who follow
16:30will be puppets of the 21st century version of the KGB.
16:34The limits of whatever power Russia was believed to have before Ukraine
16:38have been exposed to the entire world.
16:40And all the while, the numbers only get more brutal.
16:43The loss is more severe.
16:45Putin won't stop.
16:47He can't.
16:48He's trapped himself and his entire country in a cycle of sacrifice.
16:51Even though he knows that he doesn't hold the upper hand anymore,
16:54he has to keep pushing for war.
16:56Declaring peace now would be a failure that he wouldn't survive,
16:59which is why Putin is refusing every offer for peace talks that crosses his desk.
17:03But Putin knows that Russia can't come close to winning his war in time for him to enjoy it before
17:08he dies.
17:09In June, Putin stood before attendees of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and said,
17:24Even a small reminder of his age is enough to rattle Russia's leader these days, and it should be.
17:29Time is running out for Putin and for an entire generation of Russians.
17:331.5 million casualties is astronomical.
17:37But it's also just a milestone, a launching pad for more.
17:41The deaths won't stop until Putin does, and he won't stop until Russia wins or he's dead.
17:46We know where we're putting our money.
17:48And when it's all said and done, Putin's legacy will be a ruined Russia and a failure in Ukraine.
17:54We're watching the death of the Russian Empire in real time,
17:57and it all goes even deeper than we presented in this video.
17:59If you want to see how deep, we have the perfect video for you,
18:03where we cover Putin's obsession with legacy and where it's leading Russia.
18:07Check out that video, but not before you subscribe to The Military Show
18:10and enable notifications so you don't miss any of our videos.
18:13And thank you, as always, for watching.
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