Ukraine invasion kills over 2000 Russian soldiers – US Defense Department

In Moscow’s nearly two-week-old invasion of Ukraine, between 2,000 and 4,000 Russian soldiers are estimated to have died.
On Tuesday, the US Defense Department informed lawmakers.

The assessment came as US defense and intelligence officials painted a stark picture of an aggressive and aggrieved Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the likelihood that he would continue to propagate a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine despite massive global opposition, according to AFP.

When asked at a House Intelligence Committee hearing how many Russian troops have died so far in the military operation, Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, said “somewhere between two (thousand) and 4,000.”

Berrier did say, however, that the estimate was of “low confidence” because it was based on a mix of intelligence sources and open source data.

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According to the report, Russia announced on March 2 that 498 of its soldiers had died in a rare release of military death figures. Ukraine claimed at the time that the figure was higher.

Director of Central Intelligence William Burns told a House panel that he believes Putin’s support for Ukraine and the Moscow-backed war is based on “deep personal conviction.”

“He’s been stewing in a combustible mixture of grievance and ambition,” Burns said, adding that he expects “an ugly next few weeks” in Ukraine “with scant regard for civilian casualties.”

He also expressed confidence in Ukraine’s ability to “resist tenaciously and effectively.”

Putin did not anticipate the full scope of the global economic, trade, and diplomatic pushback against Russia, according to Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence.

Putin is “unlikely to be deterred by such setbacks,” she added, and sees the conflict as “a war he afford to lose,” according to DNI.