Recent articles in several leading US newspapers followed a statement from National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson saying that Russia had suffered “staggeringly high losses” in the Ukraine war.
The casualties are a vital part of understanding the war not only because the subject speaks to the future of Ukraine and Russia, but it also, if the losses are as severe as some insist, speaks to the issue of just how long the war can continue.
Every number cited below is from the Internet. There is no controlled, classified or proprietary data. The US National Security Council may know things that we don’t know, but this wouldn’t be the first time in history that casualty reports were inflated up the chain of command.
What we do know is that casualty ratios are fairly consistent across a large number of wars, and this helps us use public source data effectively. We have very little hard data. But what data we do have suggests that Ukraine’s casualties are higher than Russia’s.
The little hard data we have on Russia comes mainly from one source, an anti-Putin group who have people in Russia who have, since the beginning of the war, continually searched local newspapers as well as thousands of websites all over Russia looking for obituaries or blogger “memorials” to family members or friends.
They have been able to find about 36,000 documented deaths. They estimate that they are missing nearly 50% and currently place their “guesstimate” of total Russian deaths at “47,000 – 70,000.” What does this imply for total casualties, that is, killed/wounded/missing/prisoner?
Prisoner numbers are low. The best published data suggest that there are currently fewer than 5,000 Russians held by Ukraine and fewer than 12,000 Ukrainians held by Russia.
For purposes of calculation, we designated all Russian deaths as “Killed In Action” (KIA). This is, of course, not (and never is) technically correct.
In Vietnam, the US had 58,000 killed (58,220). In fact, only 47,434 were combat deaths; the others were from a host of other causes. Anecdotal reports suggest that a significant percentage of Russian deaths are not, in fact, combat-related.
The number of missing is also a mystery. There must be some, but those numbers are unknown. We do know that there is a very large number of people, virtually all young men, who have fled the two countries. This number is (another guesstimate) roughly 350,000-400,000 Russians and over 650,000 Ukrainians.
Wounded in Action (WIA) figures have, again based on spotty reporting, averaged between 3 and 4 times the KIA numbers. 3.5 is a good rough estimate for both sides.
Assembling public source data from various campaigns during the war – the run into Kiev, the fight for Mariupol, the counter-attack in Kharkiv, the fight west of the Dnepr River, the battle for Bakhmut, the 2023 summer counteroffensive – suggests a total of 55,000-65,000 Russian KIAs as of the end of November, which falls comfortably inside the 47,000-70,000 estimate cited above.
That is as good an estimate as we can get at this point. Using a 3.5 ratio of WIA to KIA, we obtain 47,000 KIA and 164,500 WIA (low end) and 70,000 KIA and 245,000 WIA (high end), or total casualties between 211,500 – 315,000. That is quite close to estimates circulated by the US National Security Council.
It has been reported that the Russians had suffered 13,000 casualties, and lost 220 armored vehicles, in ten weeks of fighting around Avdiivka. The fighting there has been very intense, and while it does not involve the bulk of Russian troops, it does represent a large percentage of Russian combat actions across the entire front, sometimes as much as 75% of total Russian combat operations on a given day, at least based on Ukrainian General Staff commentary on “engagement” numbers?
Using the 3.5 multiple on 13,000 total casualties, we assume 2,900 KIA and 10,100 WIA over 10 weeks. Assuming that represents 75% of Russian casualties across the entire combat area, that would mean total Russian losses in those ten weeks were 3,900 KIA and 13,600.
If that rate were spread out over the entire war, Russian losses would run in the range of 36,000 KIA and 126,000 WIA. We are back to the same number range that the verified data on Russian deaths support.
If we assume that casualties around Avdiivka represent half of Russian casualties, we end up with 6,000 KIA and 21,000 WIA over 10 weeks, or total war figures for Russia of 60,000 KIA and 210,000 WIA.
Contrast this to the daily Ukrainian General Staff (UGS) reports.
How exaggerated are the UGS reports? On the day after US National Security spokesperson Watson appeared on CNN, the UGS reported that the Russians had taken – in a single day – 1,030 KIA and lost 50 armed vehicles.
These numbers simply aren’t credible. They are generated for propaganda purposes and should carry no weight in US policymaking or other decision-making on the war. In fact, virtually all the numbers that come out of Kiev, as well as Moscow, are propaganda, and shouldn’t be viewed as anything else.
That should neither surprise nor shock. Sadly, we also get the same sort of reporting from much of the mainstream media, which regurgitates the numbers without analysis. Some governments do the same. It would be more credible if they simply refused to comment.
As for Ukrainian casualties, the losses are regarded as national secrets and cannot be reported. However, there are occasional data points that emerge. Up until about two months ago, obituaries, church bulletins and death announcements were still openly published.
These data points suggest that, as of this past summer, there were about 43,000 dead. Incomplete data – video records of funerals, pictures of graveyards – suggest that the figure was higher, but the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s legislature) recently outlawed the filming of funerals, so much of that data dried up since summer.
Nonetheless, we can take the 43,000 KIA number as a minimum for Ukrainian KIA as of last summer. That would also suggest 150,000 WIA.
Other data became available late summer in the form of reports that came from first a maker of prosthetics and later from a non-profit that was trying to provide prosthetics to Ukrainian soldiers who have lost limbs.
This is extremely useful because the rate of loss of limbs in combat remains within fairly narrow ranges, at between 4.5% and 7% of total casualties. So, if you have seven amputees, it follows that you would have something like 100 total casualties. And if the 1/3.5 ratio is used, that would translate into 22 KIA and 78 WIA (again rounding off).
The data on the ratio of loss of limbs to total casualties are available online in studies at the National Library of Medicine. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of 2001 to 2011, 5.2% of all serious injuries (which roughly equates to WIA) were amputations.
In Vietnam, the number was 5.9%. The number was around 2% for all of World War I, though that number is an overall average; the rate was substantially higher at the end of the war than at the beginning
We have two data points on amputees in the Ukraine war. One report, from the Associated Press at the end of July or early August, estimated that the number was being withheld but that there were “more than 20,000” Ukrainians in need of prosthetics.
If that represents 7% of total casualties, that would translate into 285,000 total casualties, or 63,000 KIA and 222,000 WIA. If the lower percentage were used (4.5%), that would suggest 440,000 total casualties, or 97,000 KIA and 343,000 WIA. If we use the US number from Iraq and Afghanistan (5.2%), then the casualty total would be 385,000, split between 85,000 KIA and 300,000 WIA.
Two other data points are available from the non-profit that is attempting to provide prosthetics to Ukrainian amputees and from a German prosthetic manufacturer. Both figures are from September, which would mean these numbers are now higher.
The non-profit said that there is a need for 59,000 prosthetics; the German manufacturer gave the number as “more than 50,000.” Using the 50,000 number, and 7%, would give casualty figures of 700,000+, or 155,000 KIA and 545,000 WIA.
Using the 4.5% figure gives total casualties of 1.1 million, with 245,000 KIA and 855,000 WIA. It is difficult to get a feel for which number is best, but a conservative estimate would place Ukrainian casualties at 100,000+ KIA and 350,000+ WIA.
At the same time, it is worth remembering that Ukraine, which has a notional population of 43 million, probably has a real population on the order of 32-35 million. Russia has a population of 147 million.
These figures, to be sure, are hard to grasp. Since the end of WWII, total US casualties – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc – were slightly less than 105,000 KIA and 300,000 WIA, for a total of 405,000 casualties. The current US population is 331 million.
In his interview with The Economist in November, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerie Zaluzhnyi said, using official UGS numbers, that Russia had “well more than 150,000 killed,” and then added that these numbers are “insane.”
It is possible that Ukrainian KIAs were nearing the 150,000 mark in late October–early November, as the data above suggest. Might Zaluzhnyi’s comment have been directed at his own government – that Ukrainian KIA totals were approaching 150,000, an “insane” level – and that it was time to change course in the war? We won’t likely know any time soon.
This analysis was adapted from a study of public record data by a US military intelligence official who requested anonymity.