UK says Russian casualties in Ukraine 20 times higher than Soviet losses in Afghanistan

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has claimed that Russia’s battlefield losses in Ukraine are already 20 times higher than Soviet casualties during the war in Afghanistan, underscoring what she described as the catastrophic toll of Moscow’s ongoing invasion.

Speaking at a high-level UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, Cooper said Russia is facing severe manpower and equipment shortages. “In this war that they started, their [Russian] losses are now 20 times higher than Soviet losses in Afghanistan. They are struggling to recruit, and in some areas, their stocks are so low they have resorted to using military equipment from the 1950s,” she said, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

The foreign secretary warned that Western allies would continue to tighten sanctions aimed at crippling Russia’s ability to finance the conflict. “We will target your ailing economy, your oil and gas revenues that are paying for this war,” she told the Russian delegation.

Cooper said falling energy revenues were already squeezing Moscow’s state budget, with oil revenues at a five-year low. “The price of war is piling up and the sanctions are tightening the screws — but we will go further. Be in no doubt,” she added.

She reaffirmed the UK’s long-term commitment to Ukraine, stressing that British support would remain “now and for decades to come.”

The remarks came during a Security Council session focused on Russia’s war against Ukraine, attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who urged continued international backing for Kyiv.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to prop up a communist government facing widespread insurgency.

What followed was a decade-long conflict in which Soviet forces battled Afghan mujahideen fighters backed by the United States, Pakistan, and other countries.

The war became a costly quagmire, leaving an estimated 15,000 Soviet soldiers dead and over 50,000 wounded before Moscow’s withdrawal in 1989.

The campaign is widely seen as a factor that drained the Soviet economy and hastened the collapse of the USSR.