Russian soldiers missing at record rates amid Ukraine conflict
In January, Ukraine recorded over 8,500 inquiries from Russians about missing Russian army soldiers. "The numbers provided by the Ukrainian side are, in my opinion, large, but not shocking," says General Bogusław Pacek in an interview with Wirtualna Polska.
According to the data from the staff, in January 2025, as part of the "I Want to Find" project, 8,548 reports were received from relatives of Russian military personnel. This is 22 percent more than in December and the most in the history of the initiative. Since the beginning of the project, over 60,000 reports of missing Russian army soldiers have been received in total.
information warfare: "A series of embellished things"
General Bogusław Pacek notes in an interview with Wirtualna Polska that one must interpret such facts with great caution and refrain from making further opinions due to the very high probability of data being part of a "psychological and informational struggle on both sides".
"There is a great risk of error because both the Ukrainian and Russian sides provide a series of embellished, exaggerated, or false things regarding this war," says the military officer.
The statement highlighted that this number does not include the deceased and only represents a part of the actual number of missing, as it is based solely on official requests. It is estimated that the true number of missing Russians could be 2-3 times higher.
"The first issue is desertions, and the second is the search for soldiers who disappear in war not only because they flee the battlefield but because they get lost somewhere due to the ongoing military operations, are isolated, or cut off from the units they were with in a certain area. This is natural. During any war, there are deserters, runaways, stragglers, and missing persons who are sought after," explains the general.
He notes that in the case of Russian losses, the numbers provided by the Ukrainian side are "large, but not shocking".
"One must realize that on the Russian side, there are hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands of soldiers. Therefore, a certain margin of stragglers, runaways, and missing persons is something that must occur and does occur," he adds.
According to "Mediazona", in 2024, Russian military units submitted numerous requests to recognize participants of the invasion of Ukraine as missing or deceased. In this way, the command removed them from the personnel list, opening the way for recruiting new soldiers.
Putin showers soldiers and families with money
According to journalists, over 6,200 such cases were found, and thousands more requests from the second half of 2024 have been classified, possibly indicating their connection to the military fighting in Ukraine.
"Everything depends on the reason why a specific soldier is considered missing. One must be aware that on the Russian side, there is a very high percentage of soldiers with exceptionally low levels of personal awareness and ability to orient themselves in new conditions. The soldiers sent to the front are mostly not native Russians; instead, they are citizens of the Russian Federation, but ethnically unrelated to this nation," emphasizes General Pacek.
Significantly, Putin pays contract and professional soldiers from various smaller, distant parts of Russia and relies less on native Russians.
"Therefore, the fact that they are missing in the conditions of such a war as we are observing is much more likely than if they were well-trained, well-prepared, and highly skilled individual soldiers," he points out.
The general also highlights that Vladimir Putin uses very strong - compared to other actions previously conducted by Russia - financial incentives for soldiers and their families.
"Today, not only officers, colonels, and generals, but also ordinary soldiers receive very significant benefits for their participation in this war. This applies to their families as well. Russia shows much greater readiness and implements this payment to Russian soldiers at a much higher level than Ukraine, possibly because Ukraine has fewer resources," emphasizes General Pacek, adding that Ukrainians also pay, but "Russians pay for every enemy killed, every plane shot down, every tank hit, and many other different things."
Zelensky reports Ukraine's losses on the front
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that since the beginning of the full-scale war with Russia, 45,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, and 390,000 have been wounded.
Regarding Russian losses, he stated that about 350,000 Russians have died on the battlefield, about 50,000 to 70,000 are missing, and 600,000 to 700,000 have been wounded.
Referring to these numbers, General Bogusław Pacek stated that the fact there are more Russian dead and wounded "results from the nature of the fight".
"It is always the case that the one who attacks and advances in various directions must expect greater losses," says Pacek in an interview with Wirtualna Polska. However, he notes that he does not believe that Ukrainian losses are as low as Zelensky claims.
"It's hard for him to report large numbers and frighten his people, especially when desertions are increasing in Ukraine. There are no volunteers willing to fight, and those who arrive are often rounded up in ordinary hunts, rather than being recruited through typical military recruitment," summarized the general.
"These are secret and sensitive information"
In December 2024, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Anna Tsivilyova, Vladimir Putin's niece, announced during a live-broadcast roundtable in the State Duma that at least 48,000 Russians participating in the war against Ukraine are listed as missing without a trace.
Andrei Kartapolov, the chairman of the Duma's Defence Committee, who attended the meeting, called on deputies not to disclose these data.
"These are secret and sensitive information. When preparing the final documents, make sure these numbers do not appear anywhere," he said.
