On the ground in Ukraine, Russia is doing everything it can to hide its dead. Yet over the border in Belarus, morgues in Mazyr are reportedly full of the invaders.
On the Telegram messaging app, Ukrainians are sharing details of the killed or captured, for the benefit of their family members back home. According to President Zelensky, the Russians even brought a “cremation chamber” with them. “They’re not going to tell the mothers that their children died here,” he said.
One month in, even pro-Kremlin analysts agree the invasion has not gone to plan, prompting Russia to refocus on taking control of the Donbas region. Russian corpses litter the battlefield, if we believe the news, videos and data emerging from Ukraine.
We do not hear much about Ukrainian military deaths, however — only the atrocities committed on its civilians. Counting deaths on the battlefield is notoriously difficult.
“It’s actually impossible to be able to assess troop casualties with any high-level accuracy from open source data,” said George Barros, from the Institute for the Study of War. Without proper intelligence, we are flying blind, relying on conflicting claims from both sides.
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How many soldiers have really died — and can the numbers tell us how long either side may hold out?
The big miscalculation
Before a single tank had crossed the border, the numbers were stacked against the invaders. Put simply, they did not have enough troops to secure territory in the long run.
Military strategists speak of the “force ratio”: the number of soldiers required to control an area of civilians. Michael Clarke is a visiting professor in King’s College London’s department of war studies.
“In an orderly society like Britain, you need two soldiers per thousand people. In a disordered society, like Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles, you need about 20 per thousand,” he said.
“If you assumed Ukraine was going to accept Russian occupation, and would only face minor insurgencies, you might get away with 20.”
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If controlling the whole of Ukraine was President Putin’s aim, a country of 44 million people, at the start of the conflict, this would require about 880,000 troops, virtually the entire Russian army.
In reality, about 190,000 soldiers were stationed in and around Ukraine at the start of the conflict, about 4 per 1,000. This suggests a miscalculation about how much resistance they would face.
Justin Crump, chief executive of Sibylline, an intelligence consultancy, believes a number of factors may have caused this. “Russian culture lends itself towards telling the boss what he wants to hear. A correct picture was not obtained of likely resistance,” he said. “In addition, success in Syria and Crimea — coupled with a lack of resolve shown in Afghanistan last year — may have played a part in convincing Russia of a swift victory.”
Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, told Today on BBC Radio 4 that morale had also played a part in Russian losses. “People have to be willing to take risks and do dangerous things. They are only willing to do that if they believe in what they are doing,” he said. “[The Russians] lied to their soldiers, telling them they would be welcomed as heroes. From what we can tell, the soldiers feel very confused and morale is not high.”
Crucially, though, despite fighting on multiple fronts, holding all of Ukraine might not have been the aim. “I don’t think it’s their plan to occupy the whole country — maybe just part of it,” said Bill Roggio, editor of The Long War Journal.
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Yet Ben Hodges, a former commander of the US army, believes the Russians are outnumbered. Ukraine counts 215,000 military personnel and almost a million reservists, as well as a further 200,000 emigrants, mostly men, who returned home at the beginning of the conflict and 20,000 foreign volunteers.
“The actual number of Russian troops that are inside Ukraine is probably less than Ukrainian soldiers when you add the territorial forces and reserves which have been called up,” Hodges said.
10,000 Russians killed?
Russia has not had enough resources to make significant advances for weeks. Nobody can agree on the body count — but whichever one you use, it is rising. For obvious reasons, analysts are sceptical of both Russian and Ukrainian estimates: deaths have a direct impact on morale.
The Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which published the death figures, claimed it had been hacked.
“If hackers had broken in, they’d have put a much higher figure! I’m inclined to believe it was genuine but accidentally used,” said Clarke. “The orders of magnitude between that and the Ukrainian estimates aren’t very different.”
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Another sign of how badly the war is going for Russia is the number of senior military figures killed. At least seven Russian generals have been killed by Ukrainian forces, while Putin has sacked an eighth and placed him under house arrest.
On Friday, western intelligence officials said that a Russian brigade commander, Colonel Yuri Medvedev, was deliberately run over by his own troops in a tank because of anger at rising losses.
The Russian army is split into battalion tactical groups of about 1,000 troops, of which about 120 have been committed to Ukraine. As many as 20 are believed to be no longer combat effective: as well as troop losses, they have been hit by faulty supply lines and Cold War-era equipment.
The deadliest of invasions
A death toll of between 10,000 and 15,000 is extremely high by modern warfare standards in such a short time. By contrast, 2,324 US soldiers were killed in the 20-year war in Afghanistan — about 0.3 deaths per day.
Another 4,598 US soldiers were killed in the seven-year Iraq war, the equivalent of 1.8 per day, while 58,220 died in the 20-year Vietnam War, an average of eight per day — although around 30 troops a day died during the main years of fighting between 1966 and 1970.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, by comparison, has resulted in between 350 and 500 deaths a day, making it one of the costliest invasions of modern times. This is even higher than the rate at which British forces died in the Second World War, when 384,000 were killed over six years, about 185 a day. Yet this is dwarfed by Russian losses during the same war, at 8.6 million over four years, which works out at more than 6,000 a day.
In this war, little is known about Ukrainian troop losses. The Russians say that more than 14,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed — 10 times more than Russia claims to have lost itself. Few are taking this statement seriously.
Most analysts estimate that for every Ukrainian soldier, between three and four Russians have been killed, which would mean around 3,000 Ukrainian deaths.
“These are painful numbers — but the expected ratio of losses for attack versus defence is 3:1, so it’s not entirely out of line,” said Crump.
Starved of troops and confidence
To plug the gaps, Russia is drafting in fighters from abroad. British intelligence believes a further ten battalion tactical groups — equivalent to around 10,000 soldiers, taken from all over Russia — are being sent into Ukraine. So far 12,000 Chechens were ready to be deployed, as well as 16,000 Syrians, according to Russian sources. Their forces in Armenia are also being redeployed.
Yet the high rate of attrition has forced a rethink from Russian generals.
Hodges, an American lieutenant general, said that Russian forces “are no longer capable of doing offensive operations on any large scale”.
After weeks saying its main motive was to remove “the pro-Nazi regime in Kyiv”, the Kremlin suggested on Friday it would “focus our core efforts” on “the main goal, the liberation of Donbas”.
Russians already control most of the region, and part of a potential land bridge between it and Crimea. Up to 125,000 Ukrainian soldiers are stationed near the Donbas: Russia may try to encircle these, which could change the tide of the invasion.
“It will be harder to stop Russian forces moving to the west and into the centre of the country,” said Crump. “This leaves a rump around Kyiv and Lviv in the north, which Ukraine would regard as a success compared to being completely subjugated by Russia. So both sides could yet credibly declare a victory, although in the world’s eyes Putin is surely the only loser.”
This shift by Russia towards a defensive strategy means losses may not continue at their current pace. Yet if they did — and another 30,000 troops were killed or injured — it could mean between a third and a quarter of the initial combat force is out of action.
“In military logic, when a force has lost a third, it is combat ineffective,” said Clarke. “That’s a rule of thumb that’s held for most of the past 200 years.”
With Russia starved of troops and confidence, Ukraine may, as some believe it has already started to do, try to force a retreat — but it all depends on the West. “We have to start talking in terms of winning this war, not merely avoiding escalation,” Clarke said.
Roggio, from The Long War Journal, still believes Russia has the edge, even if the rate of losses continues. “Our mistake in the West is that Russia will fight the same way we fight. We assume they value soldiers in the same way that we do — but they don’t,” he said.
