Ringo
March 25, 2003, 1:00pm
1
Does anyone have reliable casualty figures for Russian, or Soviet, KIA and wounded during their involvement in Aghanistan?
What I’ve got so far.
From the Soviet era.http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~eemoise/limit7.html
The first official Sovier casualty figures were released by the Defense Ministry in May 1988; they said Soviet casualties were 13,310 dead and 35,478 wounded. Novosti, the Soviet feature syndicate, released a commentary February 9, 1989, indicating that an additional 1,700 soldiers had died. (The New York Times, February 10, 1989, p. 6; see also February 8, p. 6, and Robert S. Litwak, “Soviet Policy in Afghanistan”, in Kurt Campbell and S. Neil MacFarlane, eds., Gorbachev’s Third World Dilemmas [London: Routledge, 1989], p. 246.) The total loss of Soviet lives may well have been higher than these figures show; one might especially note that the US casualty figures include non-combat deaths while the Soviet figures may by for combat deaths only.
From 1996.http://www.bdg.minsk.by/cegi/N2/Afg/Waraf.htm
One needs only review the recently released casualty figures to underscore the pervasiveness of the problem. Soviet dead and missing in Afghanistan amounted to almost 15,000 troops, a modest percent of the 642,000 Soviets who served during the ten-year war. Far more telling were the 469,685 other casualties, fully 73 percent of the overall force, who were wounded or incapacitated by serious illness. Some 415,932 troops fell victim to disease, of which 115,308 suffered from infectious hepatitis and 31,080 from typhoid fever. Beyond the sheer magnitude of these numbers is what these figures say about Soviet military hygiene and the conditions surrounding troop life.
http://www.bu.edu/iscip/vol12/felgenhauer.html
In 2000 a study was published by the defense ministry’s Institute of Military History, titled Russia (USSR) in Local Wars and Military Conflicts of the Second Half of the 20th Century (general editor: Maj-Gen V.A. Zolotarov). It appears to be a most comprehensive and detailed study, containing not only casualty figures, but also descriptions of Soviet forces’ combat operations in secret wars, deployment patterns, evaluation of military hardware performance, etc.
I’m not having any luck finding this study online, but Major General V.A. Zolotaryov seems to be a real, and reputable person, so I have no doubt that if you could find the study, it would have accurate numbers.http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/pr/newsletter/newsletter_12_spring96.htm
Secretary Wold met with the new Russian Co-Chairman of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, Major General Vladimir A. Zolotaryov. General Zolotaryov is a renowned scholar who has facilitated the declassification of former Soviet Union intelligence agencies’ POW/MIA archival documents. His appointment is viewed as a positive sign the Russians intend to maintain a strong and viable Commission.