In December 1979, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in order to support the friendly regime, and were intending to leave in a year at most. But the original plan turned into a long war, the cost of which was heavy losses.
The Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee at a meeting on December 12, decided to send troops into Afghanistan. Military measures were taken not to seize the territory of Afghanistan, but to protect state borders. Another reason for the introduction of troops is to stop the US attempts to gain a foothold in this territory. The formal basis for military assistance was the requests of the Afghan leadership.
Data published in newspapers
The newspaper Izvestia cites other data: "on the losses of government troops - for 5 months of fighting from January 20 to June 21, 1989: 1748 soldiers and officers were killed and 3483 wounded." It turns out that 4196 people were killed per year, 8360 people were wounded. It should be borne in mind that any information from the front was carefully controlled, and understated numbers of the wounded and killed were printed in the newspapers. At that time, the USSR tried to create a positive image of a peacekeeping country, and such losses for the charitable mission were simply unacceptable.
Official data
In total, 620 thousand servicemen, including 525.5 thousand soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army, 21 thousand civil servants, 95 thousand representatives of the KGB (including border troops), internal troops and militia, completed military service in the troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The total death toll for the period of more than nine years of military presence was 15,051 people, including 14,427 soldiers of the armed forces, who died both as a result of combat wounds and from accidents and diseases. The percentage of combat losses is 82.5%. The number of irrecoverable combat and non-combat losses includes both persons who died in hospitals and persons who died from the consequences of illness after leaving the armed forces.
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Unofficial version
The fighting of the Mujahideen against Soviet soldiers was particularly brutal. For example, the authors of The Battles That Changed the Course of History: 1945-2004 make the following calculations. Since the opponents considered the Russians "invaders and invaders", when counting the number of killed about 5 thousand a year - 13 people died in the Afghan war a day. There were 180 military camps in Afghanistan, 788 battalion commanders took part in hostilities. On average, one commander served in Afghanistan for 2 years, therefore, in less than 10 years, the number of commanders changed 5 times. If you divide the number of battalion commanders by 5, you get 157 combat battalions in 180 military camps.
1 battalion - at least 500 people. If we multiply the number of towns by the size of one battalion, we get 78.5 million people. For the troops that are fighting the enemy, rear is needed. Auxiliary units include those who bring ammunition, replenish provisions, guard roads, military camps, heal the wounded, and so on. The ratio is approximately three to one, that is, another 235.5 million people a year were in Afghanistan. Adding two numbers, we get 314,000 people.
According to this calculation of the authors of "Battles that changed the course of history: 1945-2004", for 9 years and 64 days in total, at least 3 million people participated in hostilities in Afghanistan! Which seems to be absolutely fantastic. Approximately 800 thousand took part in active hostilities. The losses of the USSR - not less than 460,000 people, of which 50,000 were killed, 180,000 were wounded, 100,000 were blown up by mines, about 1,000 people are reported missing, more than 200,000 people infected with serious diseases (jaundice, typhoid fever). These numbers show that the figures in the newspapers are understated by 10 times.
It must be admitted that both the official data on losses and the cited figures of individual researchers (probably biased) are unlikely to correspond to reality.