Russians have lost thousands of officers in Ukraine war

 Business Insider:

The Russian military has lost "thousands" of lieutenants and captains and "many" generals during their invasion of Ukraine, a senior US defense official told Reuters.

"The chain of command is still struggling," the anonymous official told Reuters.

The official said Russian troops are suffering "hundreds" of casualties per day.

CIA Director William Burns estimated that Russian casualties have reached around 15,000 killed and 45,000 wounded, according to the report.

In June, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC between 100-200 Ukrainian troops were being killed each day.

The US official also told Reuters more than 100 "high-value" Russian targets in Ukraine have also been destroyed since the invasion in February.

There appears to be a growing consensus among Western officials and Kremlinogists that Russia is losing momentum in Ukraine, which is linked to the heavy losses it's seen since launching an unprovoked invasion roughly five months ago.

Richard Moore, chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), on Thursday said that Russia's forces appeared to be running "out of steam."

"They will have to pause in some way, and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back," Moore said during a discussion at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

"The Russians are exhausted," retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of the US Army in Europe, told Insider earlier this month. Hodges made the case that Ukraine could push Russian forces back to its prewar borders by 2023.

The UK Ministry of Defense last week said that Russia might resort to recruiting from prisons to make up for troop losses.
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It is not unusual to lose lower ranking officers in combat since they are closest to the fighting.  However, Russian losses of general officers is unusual and suggest that Putin is putting them in harms way to make up for the perceived lack of leadership at the lower ranks. 

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