September was the second-deadliest month for Russian forces fighting in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, according to figures released by Kyiv.
Adding up, the daily reports from the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces show 38,130 Russian soldiers were reported as casualties last month.
The figures do not specify killed or wounded, though the overall consensus is that it includes dead, wounded, missing, and captured.
This figure is only surpassed by that of May 2024, when Ukraine reported 38,940 Russian casualties.
According to an analysis of the Ukrainian figures by analyst Ragnar Gudmundsson, four of the top ten bloodiest days for Moscow's forces since the launch of the full-scale invasion all occurred last month – Sept. 22, with 1,500 casualties, Sept. 28, with 1,470, Sept. 21, with 1,440, and Sept. 24, with 1,400.
The data doesn't indicate where the losses occurred, but Russia has continued to make grinding advances in eastern Ukraine, most recently capturing the town of Vuhledar, Donetsk Oblast.
Ukraine has published daily estimates of the number of killed and wounded Russian soldiers since the early days of the launch of the full-scale invasion.
Chris York
Initially, there was some skepticism about how accurate the numbers were, which was reflected in the fact that Western nations were at first reluctant to publish their own numbers.
"At the start of the war when I was in Moscow, we didn't speculate on numbers because there was a lot of propaganda flying around," John Foreman CBE, the U.K.'s former defense attache in Moscow from 2019 to 2022, told the Kyiv Independent earlier this year.
"But it seems to me that over the last year and a half or so, the British, American, and Ukrainian estimates have all come together."
Over the course of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine's Western allies did begin to publicly release their own estimates of Russian losses, and they are broadly in line with those coming out of Kyiv.
"The past four months have proved the costliest for Russian forces since the war began in 2022," a U.K. Military Intelligence report on Sept. 23.
The report said Russian casualties, both killed and wounded, were averaging over 1,000 a day and were 1,262 in May, 1,163 in June, 1,140 in July, and 1,187 in August, adding the total number since the start of the full-scale invasion "likely over 610,000."
"The report said Russian casualties, both killed and wounded, were averaging over 1,000 a day."
Compounding the Kremlin's manpower issues, Russian defense production facilities are suffering an acute personnel shortage.
"You have the Armed Forces and the military industry competing with each other for able-bodied men," Dr Jenny Mathers, senior lecturer in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, told the Kyiv Independent.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has drained Russia's labor market and prompted fierce competition between the military and businesses for new recruits.
At the same time, Russia's all-out war has dramatically increased the production of weapons and military equipment.
According to an investigation by BBC's Russian service, thousands of job ads have recently appeared for shift workers at defense enterprises, enticing workers with triple the standard pay, recruiting young people, and offering rewards for referrals of new hires.
At the same time, Russia is currently undertaking several steps to increase military manpower, short of announcing what would likely be a hugely unpopular second wave of mobilization.
Instead, Vadym Skibitsky, a spokesman for Ukraine's military intelligence, said in January that around 30,000 volunteer fighters were signing contracts with the Russian military per month. The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify this figure, and it is not clear if it has changed since then.
But the reluctance to resort to another round of mobilization is also forcing Putin to take more unorthodox measures – on Oct. 2 he signed a law that exempts defendants from criminal liability if they join the Russian army.
The aim is to conscript 40% of the nearly 60,000 prisoners who are currently held in pre-trial detention centers, according to the independent Russian news outlet IStories.
Mathers points out that Russian President Vladimir Putin's strict ideology around traditional family values and gender roles means that, at the moment, women aren't being targeted for recruitment in industry or the military.
"I think if they get to the point where they say 'ok, now we need the women,' that's when you can say that they have acknowledged that they're desperate, that they're really in dire straits," she said.
"That would be a tipping point."
Kateryna Denisova
