Ukraine Eliminating 40 Percent of Russian Recruits Monthly: NATO Official

Russia and Ukraine are already deep into a "war of attrition" that will likely continue through 2024, according to a senior defense official on NATO's eastern frontier.

Kusti Salm, the permanent secretary at Estonia's Defense Military, told Newsweek in an exclusive interview that Kyiv and its Western partners need to "believe in the statistics" as they try to plan out how the Kremlin's full-scale invasion will end.

"It is attritional warfare," Salm said. "Russia deliberately wants us to think that they will outlast, they will outproduce [their Ukrainian and Western enemies]," he added, making it imperative that Kyiv is able to continue "grinding" down Moscow's forces through what is expected to be a difficult winter.

"Apparently, to many this theory seems plausible, and they are attracted to this as a policy option," Salm added, referring to skeptics of Ukraine's ability to continue the costly fight. "Clearly after two years, at least some are maybe too zoomed into the daily questions and zoomed out on the strategic."

The failure of Ukraine's long-awaited summer counteroffensive has made it a bitter end to 2023 for Kyiv. Now, with open "Ukraine fatigue" among some political elites in Western nations and facing another punishing Russian winter bombing campaign, Ukrainian leaders are warning of a long war.

In Estonia—long among the European Union and NATO nations most skeptical of any detente with President Vladimir Putin's Russia—Salm said the outcome of the war is a matter of mathematics.

Every six months, he said, "the Russians can recruit 130,000, but what they can form into units is 40,000." That 40,000, Salm said, can be used as an offensive force to capture new territories and impose Moscow's will on occupied areas.

The remaining 90,000 new recruits each month cannot be used as anything more than "biomass," Salm said. "They are cannon fodder; you use them once and throw them away."

"The Ukrainians are currently killing or severely wounding more than 50,000 [every half year]," Salm added. The current attrition—the real rate of which might be even higher, Salm said—means Moscow is losing a portion of troops equivalent to around 37 percent of those being newly recruited every six months.

"We are at the poker table," Salm said. "You need to believe in the statistics."

Kyiv claims to have "eliminated" more than 351,000 Russian soldiers since February 2022. Newsweek cannot independently verify Ukraine's figures and has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment. To date, though, Ukraine's claimed casualty figures have largely chimed with American assessments.

The war of attrition is also costing Ukraine dear. U.S. estimates from earlier this year put Kyiv's toll at around 70,000 dead and up to 120,000 more wounded. Both figures will be higher after another six months of heavy combat.

As to whether Russian casualties are persistent and severe enough to eventually reach a tipping point for the Kremlin, Salm said: "On manpower side, I think we are...on the resources and ammunition side, we are not there yet."

EU nations have committed to expanding their collective defense industrial base to provide Ukraine with some 1 million artillery shells per year by March 2024; a deadline looking increasingly unlikely.

Salm said Europe is "on course" to reach that production capacity, though added that making the shells versus actually putting them in Ukrainian hands are "two different things."

Moscow, Salm added, shows no sign of easing off its mass casualty tactics.

"When it comes to additional gains, they will try with a very high attrition rate. What they also understand is that for attrition war, the main determining factor for Ukrainians to win is Western help. It's not happening in the trenches, it's happening on television screens, phone screens. You need to convince the allied public."