War in Ukraine ‘to cost Russia 1.5 million casualties’

British army chief Roly Walker says in a long war ‘there are no winners’ and ‘utter devastation for both sides and lost generations’.

Rescuers fights a fire at a home destroyed during a missile attack in Ukraine’s Kostyatynivka town in the Donetsk region. Picture: AFP

Russia will take another five years to capture large swaths of territory in Ukraine and lose a million more soldiers if it continues its “grinding” advance, the head of the British Army has said.

General Roly Walker said Moscow’s dead and wounded would be “well north of 1.5 million” if President Vladimir Putin continued sending troops to the frontline.

Russia has already suffered 550,000 men killed, wounded or captured during 2½ years of war, according to estimates used by the UK Ministry of Defence in London.

The chief of the general staff said in a long war “there are no winners”. He added: “It is an utter devastation for both sides and lost generations.”

General Walker was responding to questions at a land warfare conference in London about how he thought Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would unfold.

In a speech beforehand, he said the army needed to prepare for war with an “axis of upheaval” consisting of Russia, North Korea, Iran and China in three years’ time, and raised his concerns the countries would work together to help Moscow rearm and take on the West.

General Walker, who is a former director of special forces and survived a Taliban bomb blast when he served in Afghanistan, said the war in Ukraine was “not going well for anyone”.

He added that Moscow must fail or else a wider security framework that protects the NATO alliance – the true target of Putin’s aggression – would be at risk.

“It has just started in Ukraine, so it must fail in Ukraine, otherwise where does it go next?” he told the audience at the conference hosted by the Royal United Services Institute.

“If they carry on as they are, it would probably take the Russians five years to grind their way to their minimum objectives of the four oblasts (regions).”

A Ukrainian gunners lets rip with a 155mm M-109 Paladin howitzer towards a Russian position on the front line near Chasiv Yar, Donetsk region. Picture: AFP

General Walker was referring to the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, all of which are under partial Russian control.

Setting out the cost to Russia of taking those regions completely, the army chief said: “At the current rate of attrition of dead and wounded, that puts them probably well north of 1.5 million people casualties to achieve that, with untold billions of lost equipment.

“There have got to be more things for Russia to worry about than losing the best part of 1.5 to 1.8 million people for a slice of Ukrain,e with the way the world is going.”

Putin is devoting 40 per cent of public expenditure to defence and security to sustain the war.

General Walker said the “big if” was whether the Ukrainian armed forces could sustain their defence mechanisms.

With the conflict showing no sign of ending and the Ukrainians suffering heavy casualties, Ukrainian military sources have suggested they needed to be able to hit targets in Russia if they were to win the war. Behind the scenes, Britain is trying to persuade allies to agree that Ukraine should be allowed to use long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles on Russian military targets.

Russia had originally planned to take Ukraine with 160,000 troops in six weeks.

That battle plan failed and instead of destroying the NATO alliance, it expanded from 30 to 32 countries.

General Walker said he feared Russia would seek revenge.

“The lesson from history is the Russians don’t forget and they will come back to get their revenge,” he said.

The US, Britain and other NATO allies have given billions of dollars worth of equipment to Ukraine, including aircraft, tanks and missiles, as well as providing invaluable intelligence on what Russia is up to.

British stockpiles have been diminished as a result, with the MoD announcing on Wednesday that it would be ordering £176m ($346m) worth of Martlets – lightweight laser-guided missiles made by Thales in Belfast – to replace those sent to Ukraine.

THE TIMES