• CIA Director estimates that Russia has lost 15,000 soldiers since its February invasion of Ukraine.
• Another 45,000 Russian soldiers were wounded during the invasion.
• William Burns told the Aspen Security Forum that Ukraine had also suffered heavy casualties while fighting Russian forces.

The Head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates that Russia has lost 15,000 soldiers since its February invasion of Ukraine.

Since the invasion began five months ago, Ukraine has inflicted “significant losses” on Russian forces, according to CIA Director William Burns.

Mr Burns went on to say that another 45,000 Russian soldiers were wounded during the invasion.

“The latest estimates from the US intelligence community would be something in the vicinity of 15,000 (Russian forces) killed and maybe three times that wounded,” he told the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Mr. Burns described the figures as a “quite significant set of losses,” adding that Ukraine had also suffered heavy casualties while fighting Russian forces.

“The Ukrainians have suffered as well – probably a little less than that,” he told the conference. However, there have been significant casualties.”

Russia has not made the actual number of casualties in its war public, with the only update on March 25th declaring that 1,351 of its soldiers had been killed one month into the invasion.

Russian forces now control roughly one-fifth of Ukraine, despite failing to capture Kyiv and large swaths of the country at the start of the conflict.

Sergei Shoigu, the country’s defence minister, stated earlier this month that his country had “full control” over the eastern region of Luhansk, which accounts for roughly half of Ukraine’s Donbas region.

“In a way, what the Russian military has done is retreat to a more comfortable way of war, in a sense, by using their advantages and long range firepower to stand off and effectively destroy Ukrainian targets and to compensate for the weaknesses in manpower that they still experience,” Mr Burns said.

The US has provided intelligence to help Ukraine make battlefield decisions, and Congress passed a $40 billion package of military hardware and humanitarian aid in May.

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