ANALYSIS – Russia's brutal ongoing invasion of Ukraine has produced death and destruction on a scale not seen in Europe since WWII. Ukraine continues to fight back the invaders, making slow headway in recovering territory previously captured by Russia.
It is always hard to determine casualty counts, especially during a conflict, but it is safe to say that both sides have suffered heavy losses since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
The New York Times reported on Friday, citing unnamed U.S. officials, that an estimated 500,000 Russian and Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded to date.
The exact number killed on both sides is the most difficult to determine. Russia usually undercounts its casualties. Ukrainians don't publish their numbers, and both exaggerate the other side's potential losses.
Large weapons systems and equipment losses are easier to estimate.
As of mid-September, the two sides have lost a combined total of more than 16,000 weapon platforms, according to open-source data.
This includes almost 3,000 tanks, more than 5,500 armored vehicles and over 1,500 artillery pieces.
Actual losses are likely to be significantly higher, since the analysis by Oryx – an open-source intelligence website – only includes captured and destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available.
Meanwhile various groups continue to try to calculate the human cost of this war, at least in terms of the Russians fighting, not civilians. And their different techniques produce widely differing figures.
Maya Carlin, a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive explains:
Unskewing Multiple Claims (Smoothing the Data)
A group of academicians in the United States kicked off the effort, beginning by studying a large array of casualty reports from the outset of the war to February 2023. In essence, they smoothed the data, accounting for outlier reports and bias from different sources. The Institute for the Study of War came up with a result of approximately 76,000 Russians killed.
Inheritance/Excess Deaths
Two independent Russian media outlets, Mediazona and Meduza, teamed up with a German data scientist to use techniques for evaluating deaths developed during the Covid-19 pandemic to try to determine real casualty figures for the conflict. Their methods included analyzing inheritance claims and excess deaths reported in Russia.
By examining these two sets of data, the team estimates nearly 50,000 Russian soldiers killed as of May this year. To reach this figure, they essentially estimated how many more men under 50 died than would pass away during a normal year in Russia, using “data from the National Probate Registry [that] contained information about more than 11 million people who died between 2014 and May 2023.”
DoD Numbers for Ukraine War
The most recent report from the U.S. government puts the figure at a staggering 120,000 killed and approximately 170,000 wounded in the Ukraine war. By comparison, the U.S. lost around 58,000 killed over the entire engagement in Vietnam. To obtain this number, officials used “satellite imagery, communication intercepts, social media and news media dispatches from reporters in the country, as well as official reporting from both governments.”
The NYT broke down the casualty numbers it had found. It noted that Russian military casualties are approaching 300,000, including as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injuries.
Ukrainian deaths were estimated at close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
The NYT quoted the U.S. officials as saying the casualty count had of course ramped up after Ukraine launched its major counterattack earlier this year, and a lack of rapid medical care has added to the toll.
Whatever the real numbers are, the human cost of Russia's war of conquest in Ukraine is, and continues to be catastrophic.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
The problem for Ukraine is that a 2:1 ratio still defeats them given that Russia has so much more cannon fodder.
The “known” or published figures are, most likely, wrong on either side.
We must not under-estimate the war-propaganda effect – incl. our media/press!
As we get NO REPORTING AT ALL from the scenario on the other side, and only an Iraq-War-style positive “reporting” from ‘OUR PROXIES’ (having learnt the “danger” of real reporting from one reporter in My Lai), the public is kept ignorant!
The recently coming to surface Ukrainian problems with recruiting problems in male all age groups seems to indicate a much higher than admitted number of physically acceptable recruits for this war – which also indicates very high losses!
Russia may, of course, be doing the same and hiding its real figures in that field.
Everybody does that – but a country with a larger population has better chances of survival in any such war -and the smaller one may well TRY TO PULL IN OTHERS
THE DANGER AT THE MOMENT IS THAT WILLINGNESS TO BE PULLED MAY BE THAT MR. BIDEN (and Obama) MAY NEED IT FOR RE-ELECTION!
It’s not Russia’s “war of conquest,” that’s just an establishment talking point. It’s Russia doing exactly what Russia said it would do if NATO tried to push right up to the Russian border. It’s what NATO knew would happen, and encouraged and provoked. It’s what’s been going on since America has refused, rejected and prohibited initiation of any negotiations. It’s what America has been inciting since we overthrew the elected government of Ukraine in 2014, installed this authoritarian midget comedian, and began providing artillery ammo for Z to shell eastern Ukraine.