During their assault on Ukraine, Russian generals are "being aggressively targeted by Ukrainian forces and killed at a rate not seen since World War II," according to a report published by the Washington Post.
According to Ukrainian officials, seven Russian generals have died in the war as of now.
Their names are: Magomed Tushayev, Andrei Sukhovetsky, Vitaly Gerasimov, Andrey Kolesnikov, Oleg Mityaev, Yakov Rezanstev, and Andrei Mordvichev.
They have been killed by a variety of means, that is, by snipers, bombs, and close combat (either hand-to-hand combat or short-range combat involving firearms).
Additionally, Ukraine's defence ministry estimates that "at least 15 senior Russian commanders have been killed in the field".
If the Ukrainians are telling the truth and are correct in their assessment, then the attrition rate for Russia in this war is worse than what it was "in the worst months of fighting in the bloody nine-year war fought by Russia in Chechnya, as well as Russian and Soviet-era campaigns in Afghanistan, Georgia, and Syria".
Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor anybody else in the Kremlin has commented on the status of their generals or commanders. Defence officials and Russian media have confirmed the killing of only one of their generals.
But a senior Western official did tell the Washington Post that "it is highly unusual" that so many generals would get killed within four weeks of warfare.
Successful Targets or Unlucky?
On one hand, the Ukrainians are focusing on generals to slow down Russian advances by "concentrating fire on Russian command-and-control units near the front lines".
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, told the Washington Post that this strategy was being used because "killing senior officers can slow down the Russian advances by 'three or four or five days' before new command structures can be put in place".
On the other hand, the Russian military "has struggled to keep its communications secure" and Ukrainian intelligence units may have also "found their targets through Russian carelessness," thanks to them using unencrypted devices.
NATO has estimated that around 15,000 Russian troops have died in the first four weeks of the war, a very high number.
The Russian numbers are far less, with the authorities announcing last week that 1,351 of its troops had died.
(With inputs from Washington Post)
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