20,000 of Russia's fighters have been killed in the Ukraine conflict since December, according to the White House, which believes that 100,000 people have died overall.
The most recent statistics coincide with an uptick in bloodshed in the nation as Kyiv gets ready to launch a counteroffensive to drive the invaders out of territory they had earlier this spring.
The eastern half of the annexation of Donbas, where the Kremlin's men are still battling to encircle Bakhmut after months of Ukrainian resistance, has seen the most violent fighting.
According to John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, the US estimate is based on recently disclosed American intelligence.
He did not detail how the intelligence community derived the figures.
They would suggest, however, that Russian losses have accelerated dramatically in recent months.
In November last year, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said well over 100,000 Russians had been killed or wounded since they invaded Ukraine the previous February.
If accurate, the new numbers from the US would suggest the country has reached the same grim milestone in five months as it previously did in eight.
A massive fire erupted at an oil reservoir in Sevastopol, Crimea last week after it was hit by a drone, a Russian-appointed official there reported (Picture: AP)
Mr Kirby said almost half of the fighters lost by Russia since December were Wagner forces, many of whom are convicts released from prison specifically to enter combat.
He described the forces under Wagner command as being 'thrown into combat and without sufficient combat or combat training, combat leadership, or any sense of organisational command and control'.
In particular, he highlighted the shocking toll for the 'little town of Bakhmut', which he compared to some of the bloodiest periods of fighting in the Second World War.
Mr Kirby said: 'It's three times the number of killed in action that the United States faced on the Guadalcanal campaign in World War Two and that was over the course of five months.'
A residential building was levelled by a Russian missile strike in the town of Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk region (Picture: Reuters)
He declined to give a figure for Ukrainians killed and wounded, though General Milley said in November that Kyiv had also suffered around 100,000 casualties.
In missile strikes this morning, the Kremlin claimed to have hindered Ukraine's impending counteroffensive by destroying Western-supplied ammunition and damaging vital communication lines.
Up to 200 tons of Ukrainian munitions supplies were destroyed as a result of an attack on a train at a railroad station close to the settlement of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk People's Republic, according to Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian defense ministry.
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