Putin will throw 2 MILLION troops to meatgrinder over the next 5yrs just to seize east Ukraine, UK defence chief warns

RUSSIA will take another five years and lose almost two million soldiers to capture a “slice” of eastern Ukraine if it continues at the current rate, a UK defence chief has warned.

Army chief General Sir Roly Walker said that Russia’s dead and wounded would be up to 1.8 million if Putin keeps throwing his men to the slaughter.

He said Moscow would also lose “untold billions” worth of military equipment.

But he warned the Kremlin might be willing to absorb eye-watering losses as, “their calculus is different to ours”.

The former SAS-boss said: “In a long war, there are no winners.

“It is an utter devastation for both sides and lost generations.”

The UK estimates Russia has lost 550,000 soldiers, including dead and wounded, since Putin unleashed his full scale invasion in Feb 2022.

Gen Walker said the toll would triple if Russia continued grinding forward in the southern and eastern provinces of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk.

He said: “If they carry on as they are, it will probably take the Russians five years to grind their way to their minimum objectives of the four oblasts.

“At the current rate of attrition of dead and wounded, that puts them probably well north of 1.5million casualties to achieve that, with untold billions of lost equipment.

“The big if is if the Ukrainian armed forces can sustain the defence that they have.”

He added: “I think the dilemma is on the Russian regime.

“There has 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 Ukraine with the way the world is going.”

The UK Chief of the General Staff insisted Putin “must fail”.

Gen Walker, a former Irish Guards officer, said the full-scale attack on Ukraine was designed to fracture Nato and destroy the transatlantic alliances that protected Britain since World War Two.

He told the Rusi think tank in London: “This about the Euro Atlantic security architecture.

“That’s the object of their manoeuvre and it is just starting in Ukraine, so it must fail in Ukraine.

“Otherwise where does it go next.”

He added that Russia’s losses showed the “sorry tale of what it takes to run a long war in the modern age”.

And he mocked Putin’s “wizard scheme” to capture the whole country in six weeks,

He said: “That was the quick war theory, which was put paid to by a scratch force with a little bit of help.

“I think in that sense, it’s hard to see how this is going in Russia’ favour.”

Defence Secretary John Healey warned Putin “won’t stop in Ukraine” if he wins.