Russia loses 100,000 men in embarrassing Ukraine military disaster – but Mad Vlad won’t stop until ONE MILLION are dead
VLADIMIR Putin has the blood of 100,000 Russian soldiers on his hands as the grim milestone was reached today 10 months after Russia's doomed invasion.
But experts have said that Mad Vlad will be happy to send one million Russians to the slaughter in his desperate bid to achieve victory in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have been keeping a close tally on the war's death toll - and today claimed Putin has a grand total of 100,400 men.
With the war reaching day 302, that means Vlad has lost an average of 332 soldiers a day since February.
It is a military failure of incredible scale, with poorly trained and poorly equipped soldiers being sent to their deaths in muddy trenches.
Putin's military death toll is already more than six times higher than the Soviets lost in Afghanistan, and 20 times higher than US casualties in Iraq.
READ MORE ON THE WAR
And while the figures released by the Ukrainian military are not independently verified, experts agree Putin's failures have been laid bare on a staggering scale.
Analysts have warned however that the war could now step up into a bloody new phase - and Putin isn't going to stop.
Mad Vlad has exhausted all of his conventional options but he cannot afford to lose.
And with his regime more isolated than ever, experts have warned that Putin's only alternative to sending more troops into the Ukraine "meat grinder" will be to resort to nukes.
Most read in The Sun
But even if Vlad does unleash his nuclear arsenal, his doomed regime could still collapse next year.
However, if nothing is done to stop Putin, insiders say the war in Ukraine could drag on for another decade.
And along with the more than 100,000 losses - Putin has also seen a staggering amount of weapons and vehicles destroyed or lost in Ukraine.
Kremlin's forces have seen more than 3,000 tanks destroyed, 16 warships, and 283 aircraft, a catastrophic result for the regime.
The leadership doesn't care if one million Russians die
Olga Lautman
Pictures of abandoned or burnt-out Russian vehicles sitting wrecked in the muddy fields of Ukraine have become commonplace.
Speaking to The Sun Online, US-based Russia expert Olga Lautman from the Center for European Policy Analysis said that Putin's position both domestically and internationally has become much weaker in the past six months.
"The war has exposed the Russian military for what it is on the world stage," she said.
"They are disorganised, have no unity, and are torn apart by infighting between the likes of the Defence Ministry and Wagner Group.";
However, she pointed out that the Russian population has "either ignored or supported Putin's genocide," until he ordered mobilisation.
Since then, some 750,000 Russians are believed to have fled the country, with surreal images showing people being grabbed off the streets and taken to recruitment centres.
But OIga said that the Moscow regime will not be affected by the soaring death toll.
"The leadership doesn't care if one million Russians die," she said.
"Look at their commemoration of World War Two, they are proud of the fact that so many millions of Russians were sacrificed."
Yuri Felshtinsky, co-author of the book "Blowing up Russia" with the late Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, agrees with this assessment.
The US-based Russia expert, who was forced to leave his country, said that Putin has responded to his faltering invasion by changing the goalposts of the war.
Russia has historically seen enormous death tolls in war.
But Yuri warns that Putin will not be overthrown due to the death toll alone.
Instead, he says, the greater the Russian losses, the more important the war will seem.
He brings up the example of World War Two, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War.
"The price of life in Russia is historically very low.
Its importance to Russia is often highlighted on the basis of the scale of sacrifice made by the Russian nation.
"If Putin accepts defeat, he will likely be forced out by the Kremlin," he said.
"For the war to end, Russia will have to feel it," he added.
"Russia will feel the war if Ukraine starts to fire into Russian territory.
"Then the war will end very quickly, just as how the Soviet-Afghan war ended.
"The West is afraid to provoke a nuclear strike and trying to be careful."
He also warned that Russia is likely to fire its nukes from Belarus instead of Russian territory, to decrease the risk of a retaliatory strike.
Vlad is believed to thought he could have rolled over Ukraine in days - but has ended up with a long, bloody slog in the trenches.
Russia's advances have been thrown back by a valiant effort from the heroic Ukrainians, who are backed with support from the West.
And now the reportedly sickly 70-year-old's future is believed to be tied to his invasion's success or failure.
Putin yesterday vowed to continue the fight - and claimed they would use the combat experience to bolster their troops.
It comes as his Ukrainian opposite number Volodymyr Zelensky was flying to Washington DC for a summit with Joe Biden.
The trip would be Zelensky's first known foreign trip since Russia's invasion on February 24.
And he secured a massive £1.5 billion military aid package to help the fight against Russia.
Olga said that peace in Ukraine looks like "Russia packing up its military and going home, de-occupying all Ukrainian territory including Crimea and the Donbas".
She went on: "If someone comes into your home and starts beating you, the only way to stop is for you to either surrender your home, or they leave. The responsibility for surrender lies squarely with Russia."
However, she warned, "this won't happen under Putin".
She went on: "If his regime collapses, and there is a new face in the Kremlin that wants to make amends, then there may be short-term changes, but ultimately not a long-term withdrawal."
Putin had foolishly expected to steamroller Ukraine and for his soldiers to be welcomed as "liberators" - but they have faced a fierce fightback.
Cities and regions seized at the start of the war at the end of February are now being retaken by the Ukrainians.
The West is heavily supporting Kyiv - loading them up with the weapons they need to defeat Russia.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
The recent advances by Ukraine have opened the gateway to Crimea, the territory illegally seized by Russia in 2014.
And the return of the peninsula to Ukrainian hands would be an unprecedented failure for Putin.