CIA and MI6 speak of 15,000 dead Russians, a total of up to 125,000 soldiers could have been killed or wounded. But how are the loss figures estimated and how high are Russia’s losses really?
Since 1816, an average of 50 people have died on the battlefield every day. Russia’s war in Ukraine is far bloodier. The heads of the CIA, Bill Burns, MI6, Richard Moore, and the Estonian foreign intelligence service, Mikk Marran, recently stated that around 15,000 Russian soldiers have died since February 24 – that’s an average of more than 100 a day.
According to official information from Ukraine, the number of fatalities has recently been similarly high, at times even higher. “I expect the death rate in this war to be higher than in other major European conflicts beyond the world wars, such as the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871,” said Paul Poast of the University of Chicago.
There are two main categories of casualties in the military: those killed in action and those wounded in action, some of whom later succumb to their injuries. Prisoners of war and missing persons fall into a different category. Some estimates of Russian casualties in Ukraine include only army personnel. Others also include forces from the Russian National Guard, Rosgwardiya, the main successor command to the KGB, the FSB, and other regular forces, such as the Russian Airborne Troops (FDW), which suffered massive casualties early in the conflict.
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And then there are the fighters of the Russian-backed militias in the People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk – two puppet governments in eastern Ukraine – who have recruited large numbers of local people. Together with Russian mercenaries, they have been instrumental in the fierce fighting over the past few months.
US officials estimate that since the war began on February 24, a total of between 15,000 and 20,000 Russians have died across all three categories, according to a reliable source. On June 29, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace spoke of 25,000 Russians killed. In fact, however, Burns cited the lower limit of American estimates and Wallace the upper limit of his own estimates. Ukraine itself speaks of 38,500 dead (as of July 19), but is obviously interested in the highest possible number. On July 19, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov made the rather implausible statement that 11,000 Russians had died in the fighting for Severodonetsk and Lysychansk alone.
The large range of information conceals the fact that determining the loss figures of another country is inevitably accompanied by estimates. “It’s not a precise science,” explains a Western official. The details of the loss calculation are usually kept secret, but analysts have a number of options at their disposal. One is to mimic Russian estimates by using confidential information, e.g. B. in the form of Russian government intelligence agents or intercepted communications containing information on the casualties of Russian armed forces. But even such information can be falsified: Western authorities assume that Putin himself is not fully informed about the unfortunate course of his war.
A second method is to use Ukrainian “contact reports” on the same fights. It becomes more difficult, however, when a large part of the battles are not fought in close combat with the infantry, but out of sight with artillery. The third option is to use photos of destroyed equipment on social media or satellite imagery as a guide to the number of casualties. This takes into account how many Russian soldiers typically occupy a particular vehicle (in the case of the Russian tank on the cover, there were three) or make up a particular type of unit. However these calculations are performed, it is clear that their “error bars” are pronounced – a sign of great uncertainty.
Determining the proportion of wounded is even more difficult. At the same time, it is of crucial importance, since the effectiveness of an army does not depend on the number of casualties, but on the number of disabled soldiers. Some of this information can be gleaned from collecting field hospitals, blood bags, and other indicators of medical activity. As a rule, however, analysts have to assume that the number of wounded soldiers is in a reasonably predictable ratio to the number of dead.
But which relationship corresponds to the truth? During World War I and World War II, the average American military ratio was a little over three to one, with one death for every three wounded, according to data from the Dupuy Institute’s war history collection. In the course of the 20th century, however, the situation changed.
Research by Tanisha Fazal of the University of Minnesota has shown that the wounded-to-killed ratio increased sharply in the post-war period (see chart). This is due to the fact that soldiers go to war much healthier, have better protective equipment upon arrival, are evacuated more quickly when wounded, and receive more efficient healthcare in general.
A war fought in 1860 with 1,200 casualties would result in just 800 soldiers dead in 1980, she notes. However, a large proportion of those who would have died earlier are now classified as wounded. In the Iraq war between 2003 and 2011, for example, the ratio for the generously equipped American armed forces was almost nine to one, and in Afghanistan it was almost ten to one. These quotas are the highest ever achieved in a major modern war. The reason for this is, among other things, that wounded soldiers could be treated within 60 minutes, the so-called “golden hour”, thanks to the deployment of additional surgical teams and faster medical evacuation (MedEvac).
The question remains how much of this applies to Russia. In Iraq and Afghanistan, America increasingly relied on the use of rescue helicopters. It becomes more difficult when helicopters regularly come under fire – as in the Ukraine, for example. Under comparable circumstances, America would probably face the same problem. Along with military doctors, Dr. Fazal in the online journal War on the Rocks (2018) on simulations that showed that medical care during the “golden hour” would pose an enormous challenge for America in a fight with an opponent of the same or similar strength. A war against North Korea, for example, would require evacuating as many casualties as America has sustained in all of its conflicts over the past 17 years (including Iraq and Afghanistan) “in a period of months, if not weeks.” Such a scenario would overwhelm even American rescue capacities.
In Russia, such opportunities are even more modest. The country’s military medicine is “less mature” than that of the West, says Ronald Ti, an expert in military medical logistics at King’s College London (KCL). A particular weakness is trauma treatment by medics on the battlefield. As in many former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, the focus is on transporting the wounded to nearby hospitals for treatment. “That’s all well and good,” says Dr. Ti, “but the result is that the injured become dead because the rescue routes are longer.”
The western numbers prove it. Burns and Marran said Russia had three times as many wounded as dead. This roughly coincides with documents intercepted by Ukraine. Analysis of the filing by KCL’s Rob Lee and CNA’s Michael Kofman shows that one of Russia’s main combat forces, the 1st Panzer Army, was suffering significant casualties by mid-March. They suggested a ratio of 3.4:1, which would rise to 4:1 if the missing soldiers were included as dead.
The latter roughly corresponds to the ratio given by the militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic, which, unlike the Russian army, has conscientiously documented its losses. In addition, Kofman says the ratio can fall with the deaths of wounded soldiers and, as has happened in recent months, rise with injuries from shrapnel shells on the battlefield.
Such estimates may seem obscure. But choosing the right ratio has important implications for the Russian army’s assessment of the severity of casualties – a crucial factor in this protracted war of attrition. The 3:1 ratio chosen by American and Estonian intelligence indicates that 60,000 Russian fighters were withdrawn from the battlefield. However, some of the soldiers wounded in February or March may have recovered by now.
However, if Wallace’s death toll is correct, 100,000 soldiers may have been lost at times. If the newly arrived artillery from the west in Ukraine brings the ratio to 4:1, the number increases to 125,000 – that would be the total amount of ground forces deployed by Russia at the beginning of the war. This multiplier effect makes very high estimates of the Russian death toll less likely, argues Kofman. Because if the total number of casualties were drastically higher than the American and British numbers, the Russian army would obviously have long been in an even more explosive imbalance.
Still, losses of this magnitude provide an explanation for the severe undermanning of many Russian battalions, for the sluggish advance in Donbass, and for the fact that the military is now assembling reserve battalions of volunteers from across the country. Should Ukraine launch a full-scale counteroffensive in the southern province of Kherson in the coming months, it will further thin Russian forces. The army’s commanding officers have been particularly hard hit: “Thousands” of lieutenants and captains and “hundreds” of colonels have been killed, an American official said on July 22. Unsurprisingly, the number of troops refusing to fight is now in the thousands, another source reports.
Perhaps the salvation for Russian President Vladimir Putin is that there has been no serious domestic backlash to this excess. “These are not middle-class children from St. Petersburg or Moscow,” says MI6’s Moore. “We are dealing with poor children from the rural part of Russia. They come from working-class towns in Siberia and mostly belong to ethnic minorities. You are his cannon fodder.”
The article first appeared in The Economist under the title “How heavy are Russian casualties in Ukraine?” and was translated by Cornelia Zink.
Up to 125,000 casualties: How experts calculate Russian war casualties was originally published by The Economist.
