What do you think of the reports that the Russian troops fighting in Ukraine have experienced 315,000 casualties? (killed and injured) Here’s the Reuters report by Jonathan Landay:
WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) – A declassified U.S. intelligence report assessed that the Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began, a source familiar with the intelligence said on Tuesday.
The report also assessed that Moscow’s losses in personnel and armored vehicles to Ukraine’s military have set back Russia’s military modernization by 18 years, the source said.
I think this is part of that “full court press” I was talking about. i also wonder if they’re not comparing apples to oranges (“90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began” vs. percent who have been involved). Russian social media are not reflecting that level of casualties. Ukrainian social media are.
I genuinely don’t know what to make of it.
That dumb kid to leaked classified documents onto Discord last February leaked one that had a “low confidence” assessment of Russian casualties that ranged from 189,500 to 223,000.
315k casualties after all the quite significant fighting since then does not seem like a crazy number to me, but I would guess that is also a “low confidence” estimate.
“nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began”
That part is highly misleading. Which personnel? The 90% figure cannot be the entire Russia military, so presumably, it represents a force estimate of units participating in the war at the beginning. But Russia mobilized an additional ~300k and have aggressively pursued recruiting contract personnel, to say nothing of the prisoner “expendables” used by Wagner and still used by the Russian military.
I would note, as I have in the past, that the attritional warfare that has defined most of this conflict is all-consuming in terms of personnel and material. By nature, it can only be sustained based on the ability of a country to create more manpower and obtain/build more weapons and supplies.
I also think this is a political Rorschach test. Those who don’t or never supported US assistance to Ukraine naturally see all this as evidence the war is pointless, and that the US should stop pouring resources into it, while those who support Ukraine see this as evidence of how critical US assistance is and the need for it to continue.
I think its actually not an outlandish estimate.
Peter Turchin (of “Cliodyamics” and “Age of Discord” fame) had I think a pretty perceptive post on it in the summer (https://peterturchin.com/war-in-ukraine-iii-an-interim-assessment/)
He cites a figure of 50,000 KIA Russians, with another 22,000 pro-Russian separatists from Donbas from the summer. If apply a standard 3 to 1 WIA to KIA ratio, then total casualties is 288,000. Apply another 10% for casualties in 4 months since the summer, and you have 315,000 casualties.
What the assessment is missing is context. Turchin gives few datapoints that point to Ukrainian KIA being a multiple of Russian KIA. Even a Ukrainian KIA that is equal to Russia is devastating, considering the best estimate of Ukraine’s population is around 1/4 to 1/5 of Russia’s. There’s almost no datapoints that Ukraine has suffered significantly less casualties then Russia.
Of course, if manpower is the critical factor; there is one intervention that would reverse the fortunes of war. for Ukraine…. NATO troops.
This:
is the key point to me and a genuinely shocking one. If the Ukrainian to Russian casualty count is 3:1 that’s bad enough but if it’s 5:1 as some sources contend, it’s horrifying enough that it should invite a policy reconsideration on our part. That would be 1.5 MILLION Ukrainian military casualties.
There is no basis to the idea that casualties are significantly higher for Ukraine – they are almost certainly lower.
The leaked estimates from February show them to be much lower and there is little basis for Turchin’s claim.
The number seems plausible. How useful is Russian social media? I suspect it’s pretty well controlled. A lot fo the conscripts are coming from jail or very poor areas so their deaths may not hit social media.
Steve
Cc
New York Times article citing “U. S. officials” claming 500,000 Ukrainian military casualties back in August
The 500k in the article is for both sides. A passage near the beginning:
“Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.”
Dave.
My cell phone works on your site. My computer attempts to comment results in a message about can’t Captcha Hatcha blah blah. A comment just goes to please wait, and then expires. Any thoughts?
James Joyner complained about the same problem. Thanks for the feedback
My first step was to upgrade my PHP (WordPress is written in PHP) to the current version. My next step is to upgrade the last of my plug-ins to the current version. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, I’ll escalate the problem report.
Tecnology. Eh. 😉
Maybe this will work.
The comment was simple.
I believe you have pointed out that ethnic Russians comprise 60-70% of Crimea. And then there is Sevastopol. So Putin is never giving that up. That ship sailed under Obama.
So all this analysis seems moot. These are dominating variables.
Russia is stuck. If Ukraine insists on recapturing Crimea, we have an intractable problem. Gaza, anyone?
The blood will just flow until one side crumbles under the weight.
Leadership might be to sue for an imperfect peace. Is Biden just too stubborn and trying to cover up for the Obama botch? Are military/commercial interests just too strong?
The Andy’s of this site might have insight.
For several months I assumed I had been blocked.
Then I simply deleted the Glittering Eye shortcut and searched, bookmarked it again. that worked.
The only people I’ve ever blocked have been obvious spammers.