Link please.
The Donetsk Separatist Army Went To War In Ukraine With 20,000 Men. Statistically, Almost Every Single One Was Killed Or Wounded.
In nine months of brutal fighting, the army of the pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region has buried or sent to the hospital as many men as it had in its entire pre-war army.
The separatist DPR began Russia’s wider war on Ukraine in February with around 20,000 men in six light infantry brigades. By November, the army had lost 3,746 killed in action and 15,794 wounded in action, according to the DPR’s ombudsman.
That’s 19,540 KIAs or WIAs. While many of the wounded undoubtedly returned to front-line service, many didn’t. And yes, the DPR army has expanded over the course of the nine-month wider war through the forced mobilization of thousands of men from the separatist state’s 2.3 million population.
But even if the DPR army doubled in size, losing half its ultimate manpower is still catastrophic. The U.S. Army assumes a unit becomes incapable of major combat after losing just 31 percent of its strength, according to the service’s Field Manual 101-5-1.
That the DPR army has suffered extreme casualties should come as no surprise. The separatist state is a puppet of Russia—and an impoverished one, at that. The Kremlin has equipped DPR fighters with outdated weapons and gear—Mosin rifles and T-62 tanks, for example—and sent them on dangerous missions without adequate support.
Russian leaders seem to view DPR men as cannon fodder. “They don't count us, they leave us,” one drunk Donetsk fighter complained in a video that went viral in August. “But I want to live."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/11/18/the-donetsk-separatist-army-went-to-war-in-ukraine-with-20000-men-statistically-almost-every-single-one-was-killed-or-wounded/?sh=202e023311c0
Forbes.