JAKARTA - CIA Director William Burns estimates that 15.000 Russian troops have died in fighting in Ukraine, which is now almost into its fifth month, with about three times the number injured.
Since starting the invasion on February 24, Russian forces have invaded the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and occupied about a fifth of the country's territory. But Burns, speaking at the Aspen Safety Forum in Colorado, said the gains came at a price.
"The latest estimate from the US intelligence community is about 15.000 (Russian troops) killed and probably three times as much injured. So the losses are quite significant," Burns said.
"And the Ukrainian people are suffering too - maybe a little less than that. But, you know, significant casualties."
Russia classifies military deaths as a state secret even in peacetime. They have not updated official casualty figures during the war. On March 25, it said 1.351 Russian soldiers had been killed.
The Kyiv government said in June that between 100 and 200 Ukrainian soldiers were killed per day.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow's military "duties" in Ukraine now extend beyond the Donbas, in the clearest acknowledgment that it has expanded its war goals.
But Burns said at least for now the concentration of Russian military forces in the Donbas showed they had learned from the failures at the start of the campaign, with Moscow stalled in its offensive in Kyiv.
"On the one hand, what the Russian military has done is retreat to a more comfortable means of war, in a sense, by using their superiority and long-range firepower to defend and effectively destroy Ukrainian targets and to compensate for the weakness of human resources that they still have," said Burns.
Meanwhile, in recent days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky carried out the biggest internal purge of government officials in the war, citing their failure to root out Russian spies and announcing a number of cases of treason.
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The United States has provided large amounts of Ukrainian intelligence to help guide its battlefield decisions, raising questions about whether the CIA and the Pentagon should be concerned about Russian infiltration. However, Burns seems to play down those concerns.
"We are confident that the partnership we are building is effective. And we share a significant amount of intelligence with the Ukrainian services and with the Ukrainian leadership which they use very effectively," Burns said.
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