Military deaths in Russian invasion of Ukraine increase vertiginously and would add up to thousands

After two weeks of Russian offensive in Ukraine, the human and material toll of the most serious military conflict in Europe since World War II is rising sharply: avalanche of deaths, exodus of refugees and large number of equipment destroyed.

Thousands of military dead

The high number of victims after two weeks of conflict testifies to its intensity. Although caution is necessary when analyzing the available data, Russia, which has mobilized more than 150,000 soldiers, undoubtedly faces heavy losses.

The only official Russian report available, published on March 2, speaks of almost 500 soldiers killed and 1,600 wounded in their ranks, an average of about 80 dead and 260 wounded a day.

The figures seem underestimated. On Tuesday, the United States estimated that between 2,000 and 4,000 Russians were killed in combat, or between 153 and 307 deaths per day.

With the ratio of three wounded for every dead announced by Moscow, the Russian army would in this case count between 6,000 and 12,000 wounded.

For comparison, some 4,000 US soldiers died in Iraq between 2003 and 2021. In Afghanistan, 2,500 US servicemen did not return home in two decades of conflict with the Taliban.

High intensity

With the conflict in Ukraine, “the world discovers high-intensity combat again”, comments Pierre Razoux, academic director of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies (FMES).

Razoux recalls that this level of attrition was already reached during the Chechnya war (1994-1996) or the Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli war (1973), in which “the Israelis had 3,000 dead and 9,000 wounded in three weeks.”

“During the war between Iran and Iraq, the figures reached 1,000 daily dead in the great offensives”, he explains, about this conflict of the eighties.

In Ukraine, the death toll could rise if the Russians enter the big cities, where entrenched Ukrainian forces will have significant tactical advantages.

“If Ukrainian forces continue to inflict casualties on the Russian military at the current rate, Putin will have to start thinking about a viable exit strategy.”, affirms Gustav Gressel, in a note from the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

For its part, Kiev has not reported its casualties. Moscow claimed in early March that 2,800 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed.

Hundreds of destroyed armor

Armored vehicles on fire, destroyed, abandoned trucks on the roads… The images show significant damage to military equipment.

An overestimated balance of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense on Russian losses reports 81 helicopters, 317 tanks, a thousand armored vehicles, 120 artillery guns, 28 air defense vehicles, 56 rocket launchers, 60 tankers, seven drones and three ships.

The site oryxspioenkop.com, which only records documented Ukrainian and Russian material losses, noted on Wednesday that Russia lost 151 tanks, almost 300 armored vehicles, 10 fighters and 11 helicopters, compared to 46 tanks, almost a hundred armored vehicles, five fighters and two ships lost by Ukraine.

Dead and exiled civilians

The conflict launched on February 24 caused one of the largest humanitarian crises on the continent. More than two million people fled to take refuge abroad, mostly in Poland, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Europe expects to receive up to five million refugees.

The increase in bombing in Ukraine portends a higher number of civilian deaths. Since the beginning of the war, at least 474 have been killed and 861 wounded, according to the latest UN count, which stresses that its figures are probably lower than reality.