The Russian military's heavy losses from Ukraine in charts

According to U.S. intelligence, Russia has lost thousands of troops in the fighting in Ukraine. The number of American troops lost in the Afghanistan or Iraq war is more than that.

The rate of casualties for the Russian army is unsustainable and it is bad for the army's image. More than 150,000 Russian troops are involved in the war with Ukraine, and an estimated 15,000 to 21,000 are injured, a huge toll that is contributing to the stalemate developing as Ukrainian fighters stop the Russian advance.

Mark Cancian is a retired Marine colonel and senior advisor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It is more sensitive to casualties.

If they keep having casualties at this rate, I don't think they will be able to mitigate it.

The US intelligence estimate of 7,000 losses seems too high for Jeffrey Edmonds, a former US Army tanker and CIA military analyst. Even more conservative guesses like 4,000 or 5,000 are still staggering.

Many of the poorly trained Russian army were not aware they would be in active combat, which contributes to the high casualty rate. The army has carried out poor operational and tactical maneuvers, for example, believing that they could easily drive into Kyiv and take the city.

The Ukrainian army has put up a stronger resistance than anyone anticipated, which is one of the reasons for the extreme casualties. The CIA Director said that Putin would be able to take the city in two days, while the US intelligence said the capitol would fall after the invasion.

The performance of other troops is affected by the way in which morale is brought down by these overwhelming losses.

The Russian army has been accused of being destroyed and of being combat ineffective.

According to Cancian, the U.S. could technically sustain Russia's current casualty rate because of the sheer size of its military, but losses of this scale so quickly would likely cause a big opposition back home.

Cancian said that the political viability of the United States would be the question. What is the willingness of the population to accept them?

Despite media censorship in Russia and Putin's false narrative that the war in Ukraine is not a war but a special operation, these casualties will make the reality hard to hide.

The population will understand the magnitude of the special operation over time.