- Whilst Russia has sustained continuously high casualty rates since launching the illegal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, including likely more than 400,000 killed and wounded in both 2025 and in 2024, ethnic Russians from cities continue to contribute a disproportionately small share of service personnel and resultant casualties relative to the rest of the population.
- Independent Russian media outlet Proekt recently reported the results of a large-scale study, which found that less than 1 per cent of Russian state officials have relatives who had participated in the illegal invasion.
- By focusing recruitment efforts disproportionately on impoverished regions, often predominantly populated by ethnic minorities, Russia’s state apparatus better leverages financial inducements, whilst also limiting the impact on those urban-dwelling parts of the Russian population that have greater political agency.
- Russian President Putin and the Russian senior leadership are almost certainly prepared to tolerate continuously high casualty rates so long as this does not negatively affect public or elite support for the war, and those losses can be replaced.