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December 12, 2024 - 10:00am
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. He further reported 370,000 cases of battlefield medical assistance for the wounded, though he stressed that “approximately half of the soldiers wounded in action are later returning to the battlefield”, and that the data includes “light or repeat injuries”.
Such an admission may at first seem surprising. The Ukrainian President has been notably reluctant throughout the war to go into specifics about the number of casualties. He has not put a number on Ukrainian war deaths since February, when he claimed 31,000 troops had been killed, and even then refused to say how many had been injured lest it assist Moscow’s military planning. Zelensky proved similarly averse to providing details in an interview with Kyodo News at the start of December. Regarding reports in the Wall Street Journal from September that a confidential Ukrainian estimate this year had put the figure at 80,000 dead, he replied simply: “No, less. Much less”.
So why the sudden need to put numbers out into the public domain? The answer lies with US President-elect Donald Trump, who posted on Sunday that Ukraine had “ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers, and many more civilians”. Never a man for details, Trump did not specify how many were dead or wounded. For his part, Zelensky took to Telegram to clarify.
The truth is that 43,000 is a very low number, with other credible organisations offering much higher calculations of Ukrainian losses. On 4 December, Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov claimed that Ukrainian General Staff data indicated 70,000 dead and another 35,000 missing. The UALosses website, which tracks the names and ages of the deceased, says that at least 66,622 troops have died. At the end of November, the Economist suggested, based on leaked and published reports by intelligence agencies, defence officials, researchers and open-source intelligence, that at least 60,000-100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died while an additional 400,000 are too wounded to fight. In a particularly sobering statement, the Economist noted that, assuming six to eight Ukrainian soldiers have been severely wounded for every one killed, one in 20 men of fighting age (18-49) is either dead or too badly injured for war.
Casualty figures are another front in the war. Both sides have been reluctant to share their own, yet provided overblown estimates for enemy losses. The reasons for this are clear: the need to present a view of battlefield success, the danger of demoralising one’s own army and society, and the risk of offering the other side insights or propaganda opportunities. As such, being forced into making a public admission of losses, even a suspiciously low one, would be problematic for Ukraine’s President at any time.
However, it is particularly difficult in the current political climate. It may exacerbate the existing desertion crisis. What’s more, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently urged Kyiv to drop the conscription age from 25 to 18, an idea met with horror among Ukrainians. As such, Zelensky’s open discussion of losses will likely exacerbate an already emotional public debate about sending teenagers to their deaths. While the Ukrainian leader has said he has no plans to lower the mobilisation age, he may be even less able to do it now for fear of public backlash, thereby depriving Kyiv of vital manpower needed to repel Russian advances in Donetsk.
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SubscribeIf Putin had the approval rating of Starmer, Scholz, Macron or Zelensky he wouldn’t last a week. His authority rests on having an approval rating well over 50% and if he dropped way below this someone from the inner circle would remove him. So the idea that Putin faces ‘no such PR exercise’ is laughable.
Most Russians under the age of 60 get their war news from bloggers on Telegram, not from state TV. These bloggers are mostly in favour of going at least as far as the Dnepr and ideally taking Odessa. So if Putin opted for freezing the conflict along current lines he would face considerable opposition. Even more so now that the Syrian debacle has highlighted what can happen when you freeze a conflict without inflicting total defeat on the enemy.
Barring a complete collapse of the Ukrainian army I don’t think the Dnepr or Odessa are likely. Fighting beyond the Donbas means fighting away from well established supply chains and infrastructure, something the Russian army isn’t particularly good at and I expect even the most skeptical of the war in the Trump administration wouldn’t accept that scale of defeat.
I expect Russia won’t make peace without taking the rest of the major settlements in the Donbas and would probably like to control the whole territory but beyond that I don’t think they have the capacity to go further.
Yes this seems right.
Probably correct, unfortunately. Let’s hope the Ukrainians manage to kill lots more Russians before the ceasefire happens. Also, if they are going to have to hand over the Donbas anyway, destroy every factory, bridge and public building in the place.
I agree with this mostly. In a peace negotiation, possession is usually 9/10 of the matter. Putin hasn’t even taken the entire Donbas. Ukraine would be ceding some unconquered territory just acceding to this demand. I think this was probably his initial goal when he attempted his assault on Kyiv through Belarus, annex the parts you mention then leave a pro-Russian government in Kyiv. He will probably still make that demand, knowing he won’t get it, and ultimately accept the line of control as it stands today.
His other option, and the one I think we’d best prepare for, is that he’ll choose to continue fighting, which will put Trump in a tough political position. Trump will then face the choice of either continuing aid or reneging on one of his campaign promises, albeit not a pivotal one. Whichever choice Trump makes, time is on Putin’s side, because if Trump continues to back Ukraine, the pressure will begin to mount domestically for Trump to force Ukraine to take what the Russians are offering. If he chooses not to continue aid, then Russia will have a battlefield advantage that grows over time. Only Russia really knows how truly decisive western weapons were or weren’t for Ukraine’s success. If he calculates that western aid is the only way Ukraine can continue to resist, he will probably take this course.
All the non MSM sources are agreeing with you. Putin will split Ukraine in two all the way up to Dnepr and to include all of Odessa province so he can link up with Moldova which is heavily pro Russian ( excluding emigrants) They also predict it will happen before Jan 20th. I think I would rather believe these commentators rather than the MSM.
Blinken publicly calling on Zelensky to reduce the call-up age to 18 sounds incredibly stupid. It more or less confirms Putin’s line that the US is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Yup. Easy for Blinken and American military-industrial complex beneficiaries to say. Oops, my mistake—“defenders of democracy.”
It’s crazy, why will the 18 to 25 year olds last any longer than the 25 to 40+ that are dying already
It’s a stupid last roll of the dice, from idiots who want the war to last as long as possible
He is preparing to negotiate – this is steaming towards him like a train in a tunnel – and part of that is discussing the number of deaths.
looking likely that Russia will walk away with a large chunk of territory and if I was Putin i would try and offer some concessions as part of a return to participating in ‘normal’ trade relationships and international bodies. If not, it would be best to ostracise Russia economically and politically for the foreseeable future or do we reward bad behaviour ?
Estimating casualties? GB lost <400,000 in 6 years in WW2, more if you include the Commonwealth and not just on one front. The German and Japanese aggressors far more. 60,000 a year sort of fits but they started with 250k with 900k in reserve so why the 18 year old call up? 1200 a week is pretty fierce fighting. A lot of munitions.
Well, it is 1984 and we’re lied to all the time so will we ever know?
Perhaps we can send several million dollars again. Casualties partially paid for by Biden and my tax dollars.
Speaking personally, if my tax dollars are being spent on the killing of Russians, I’m good with it.
But not prepared to do it yourself…
I don’t think I would be a lot of use at my age, but if I ever wanted to meet my end in such a way as to gain entry to Valhalla, attempting to rid the world of Russians seems a good way to do it.
Those men and women did die for a purpose. Putin would have taken all of Ukraine if he could get it. That was the plain and obvious intent of his failed blitzkrieg assault on Kyiv at the outset of the war. Had that assault succeeded, he would have annexed most of the country, including the entire Black Sea coast, and left a puppet government in a landlocked Ukraine completely dependent upon Russia. That was the optimal result. He won’t get that now, but he will get the Donbas plus what he’s already taken. Still, Ukraine will retain its independence, some of its seaports, and its viability as an independent nation. It’s up to the Ukrainians themselves to decide now whether it was worth it or not. It may not be the outcome they wanted, but it’s not nothing.
As far as undercounting or overcounting casualties goes, what else is new. This is basically as old as warfare itself. In ancient times, when the King asked an advisor how the war was going, his answer would depend on whether he favored continuing the war or suing for peace. If the advisor wanted the war to continue, he’d exaggerate the enemy’s casualties and downplay the kingdom’s casualties. Of course, if he was against the war, he’d argue the opposite. Being a good leader, then as now, was an exercise in knowing the biases of your advisors and having a varied group of opinions to help get a clearer picture. In the era of the modern nation states with elected governments, the people’s opinions on the war are a factor, so the media will inflate or deflate them according to their own political agenda or as part of wartime propaganda. Literally everybody does this. Russia does it, Ukraine does it. Hamas does it. The only reason the US doesn’t do it as much with its own casualties is because between the laws and the media it’s a lot harder to get away get away with. The US certainly used to do it though. If there’s a war with China, they’ll probably get the media to go along with fudging the numbers like the good old days.
It seems unlikely that the drive on Kiev was a serious attempt to take it…not enough troops. If it had worked then fine for Russia, if not then it had diverted Ukrainian forces from the Donbas.
And yes, any losses put forward by either side, or the MSM, are almost certainly total BS. More believable figures are available elsewhere. It also seems likely that the reason Ukraine won’t call up 18+ year olds is because there aren’t sufficient of them… not enough born at that time, and every country needs a future generation.
If not to topple the government quickly and destabilize the country, enabling him to annex whatever he wanted in the chaos, what exactly was the purpose of the Kyiv attack and the other northern assaults? Why commit any troops or resources? If not the swift decapitation of the Ukrainian state, what was the point of any of it. I think Russia was attempting to bring a swift end to the conflict by using an unexpected route and catching the Ukrainians unprepared. I think it was a viable strategy. In the history of warfare, there is quite a bit of precedent for this type of decapitation strike against an enemy to achieve a quick and decisive victory. There have been many failures, but also some successes. It wasn’t a bad strategy from a purely military perspective, though maybe the execution was less than spectacular.
Perhaps you’ve hit upon Putin’s error. He wasn’t committed enough to the strategy. For these types of gambles to work, one has to have an ‘all in’ sort of mentality, like the Allies at D Day, a willingness to stake the outcome of the war on a single strategy. Putin is notoriously cautious and might have been unwilling to risk everything on an all or nothing gamble, but felt it was worth a token attempt just to see if Ukraine would roll over easily. If it failed, he could fall back on a war of attrition that would heavily favor the numerically superior Russian army. Who knows what’s actually going on in the mind of Vladimir Putin.
You’ve hit the key point: Putin is cautious. He is also rational. He wanted agreement with the West on Russia’s security but was rejected. He probably didn’t want to invade Ukraine but felt there was no option, quite possibly because he would be replaced.
The West wants Putin to “-fall”. This isn’t sensible. The replacement is likely to be considerably less rational or cautious.