Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The General Secretary urged young Russians to realize, that they are being deceived by the Kremlin.
Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin explained in a speech on Russian television that the goal was to “demilitarise and denazify” Ukraine.
Additionally, he recognised the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, which make up the Donbas region, as independent and supported rebel forces in the oblasts.
In total, Russia has annexed five Ukrainian oblasts, if you count the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed in 2014.
The Russian leader has repeatedly questioned Ukraine’s right to even exist, including in Putin’s infamous 2021 essay, where he suggested that Russians and Ukrainians are, in fact, one people.
But according to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Russian youth need to look past the propaganda and realize what is actually going on: that they are being sent to die because of the political ambitions of the Russian political elite.
A brutal toll
During a joint press conference in Kyiv on June 3, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to deliver a stark warning aimed directly at the Russian public.
Rutte claimed that Moscow is actively hiding the true scale of its military losses. According to alliance data, Russia is losing about 30,000 soldiers every single month.
That staggering number is higher than the total number of Soviet troops killed during the entire ten-year war in Afghanistan.
The NATO chief did not hold back when addressing the young men being sent to fight. He warned that many recruits receive poor training and terrible equipment before being pushed onto the battlefield.
“There is a very high chance you’ll die or be wounded while you’re out there – and odds are that if you are wounded, you’ll be left to suffer in the mud and die. So when we talk about tens of thousands of casualties – that’s not abstract. That will probably be you,” Rutte said.
Straining the military
President Zelenskyy backed up those claims with his own grim estimates. He stated that Russia actually loses between 30,000 and 35,000 personnel each month.
Even though the Kremlin constantly replaces these losses with new contracts and mobilized troops, the heavy toll is wearing down the military.
Since December, Russian forces have struggled to keep the upper hand. Zelenskyy observed that the amount of land they can capture has shrunk significantly. He believes that high losses and international sanctions might eventually force the Kremlin into peace talks, but the world must keep up the pressure.
To protect its own future, Ukraine is heavily ramping up its independent defenses. Zelenskyy announced that the country now invests between $45 billion and $50 billion annually in making its own weapons, ensuring its forces can stand strong for the long haul.
