Putin announces Russia’s losses: ISW explains accuracy of this data

3 comments

1. 20.000 a month is quite a shocking admission, coming from Putler. Can you imagine being conscripted into a war of which even your president admits has *at least* 20.000 casualties a month.

   I suppose that the Ukrainian estimates are quite accurate then.

2. If that’s the number he is willing to go public on I think the numbers generated by Ukraine and others of up to 30K+ dead and wounded in some months are quite accurate and a dead sentence for Russia’s Demography.

   Using Russia’s ‘official’ numbers though we can go further estimating that Ukraine had a 1/3 to a 1/8 dead ratio depending on the circumstances. Meaning Ukraine’s monthy deaths would be between 8000 and 3000 dead and wounded a months.

   We can go even further and assuming that since it has been reported that Russia’s aftercare for wounded personel and repatriation has been horrendous and Ukraine has been able to set up a (on occasion) efficient system of triage and treatment and generally caring more about its soldiers it has a more favorable ratio on wounded to dead. But you are looking at about 2000-2500 to a 1000 or a bit less dead a month.

   Even with Russia’s bigger population these are not favourable numbers although the price Ukraine is paying is pretty horrible and damn high it looks ‘sustainble’ espacially if more care can be put into proper care and triage at the front.

   This is only the numbers of dead Russians though. Probably militias and merc aren’t counted as official russian casualties so who know how much the Russia militairy and it’s militia forces have actually lost this war. I believe the number to be greatly higher then 500K especially counting the donbas and luhansk militiias and storm Z and former wagner prisoner militias.

3. So many things wrong with this.

   First of all, shitty casualty analysis. Russia’s wounded to killed are not 3:1. That is not “the standard ratio,” for one thing. There is no such thing. Modern militaries with advanced field medical capability achieve much higher than that. Even Ukraine’s capability, stretched to the limit as it is, has remained higher than that throughout the war. Thanks in no small part to an incredible medical corps, and also to immense aid provided by friends and allies.

   For another thing, Russia’s wounded to killed was more like 2:1 at the start of the war and has only gotten worse as the wounded have been abandoned on the battlefield, seemingly as a matter of policy. In the thick of Russia’s “human wave” assaults, reports have put casualties at more like 1:1. Basically First World War levels.

   Beyond that, there is no reason whatsoever to believe Putin. Russia has been losing between 1200 and 1500 people per day. That does not add up to 20 thousand per month. To accept that, you’d have to account for how every single day, every single one of those reports of Russian casualties has been wrong. You’d have to account for it all the way back to the beginning of the war.

   The reality is that this war has been a gigantic mountain of corpses for Russia. And Putin has laid them down one by one, every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year of this invasion. Corpse by corpse. You can’t do that each day, a thousand or more each day, and then come around later and be like, “pfff, nuh uh, it’s not that many.”

   Yuh huh. They’re all still there. None of them have become un-wounded or de-killed. There’s no takebacks or recounts or blustering until the casualties aren’t casualties anymore. Day by day.

   Putin’s attempts remind me of addict bullshit, actually. That kind of “wait wait can we negotiate?” crap that addicts pull.