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submitted 3 days ago by morysal@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

The average life expectancy for a Russian soldier in Ukraine is between 20-30 minutes, CIA director John Ratcliffe said. Speaking at a defense summit in Pennsylvania, he attributed the deadly conditions for Vladimir Putin's forces to Ukraine's combat drones equipped with AI. "What I would say is, our intelligence is consistent with some of the open-source reporting you may have seen in Ukraine," Ratcliffe said.  "So the average life expectancy of a Russian recruit, right now, arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine, is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes." "And that's because AI-powered drones have gotten to be such specialized, low-cost killing machines. And it's why we're now four and a half years into that conflict," Ratcliffe added. Ukraine said this month that Russia has lost about 1.4 million soldiers since the beginning of its full-scale invasion, with over 1,000 of the Kremlin's troops killed or wounded almost every day.  In May, Ukraine's defense ministry said it was killing roughly 200 Russian soldiers for every kilometer of territory that Moscow claimed.

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[-] ranzispa@mander.xyz 2 points 2 days ago

If their number of soldiers is much higher than 50 and they are on average losing all of their deployed troops every half an hour they will eventually end up with just 50 soldiers on the front. And they'd lose those 50 soldiers in a few hours anyway. As long as the above statement is true.

I have no doubts they're probably not replenishing much more than 50 soldiers per day. I have doubts the life expectancy of a soldier is 30 minutes.

[-] REDACTED@infosec.pub 1 points 2 days ago

I have no doubts they're probably not replenishing much more than 50 soldiers per day.

1000+

[-] ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

Well, that is quite a larger number than 50

[-] REDACTED@infosec.pub 1 points 2 days ago

I think you're confusing per day/per hour/per those 30 minutes.

[-] ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

Maybe, but still does it make sense to you this life expectancy of 30 minutes? They're reinforcing 1000 per day and those 1000 generally die in 30 minutes.

[-] REDACTED@infosec.pub 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I mean, the numbers are there. I frequent combat footage communities and it's honestly not that shocking. They have been reporting daily ever since war began, and by now it has pretty much peaked on troop casualty count per day which is why Russia is also recruiting much more aggressively, even just snatching people from the street like we've seen in many videos. They're obviously becoming quite desperate in their attempts to replenish the lost troops.

this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
449 points (94.6% liked)

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