Ukraine-Russia War Sees 300,000 Casualties in One Year of Conflict
The one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 24 February 2013, marks a slowing of the conflict to a frontline that is reminiscent of wars. History has been made of thought.
Although it is difficult to calculate casualty numbers, western officials have put together military figures from both sides of the conflict at 300,000. Peak rates of about 1,000 per day are currently being observed as Russia’s offensive against Bakhmut continues. It is believed that Russia has suffered around 175-200,000 casualties while Ukraine is at least 100,000.
However, the ratio of military personnel wounded to those killed in action clearly shows the stark difference between combatants. Ukraine sustained somewhere in the range of 10-20-1, meaning that one military death is for every 10-20 injuries, while Russia’s losses are likely closer to a 3:1. These figures suggest that military deaths in the long-running war could range from 60,000 to 100,000 at the bottom, and as high as 100,000 at the top.
Although there are many causes for this disparity in the world, it can be attributed to Ukraine’s facilities that include combat medics who can deliver first aid. NATO countries also donate much of NATO’s medical infrastructure, which is closer to those in greatest need. Russia’s logistic lines are stretched, and Moscow’s apparent disregard of its personnel’s care is another contributing factor.
While civil casualties are more difficult to quantify, it is possible that Russia’s indiscriminate direct fire attacks on civilian buildings throughout the war resulted in significant deaths. The more gruesome Russian acts were exposed when Ukrainian forces liberated Bucha and discovered signs of mass war crimes.
From the Russian attempts to seize Kyiv with lightning airborne and armored assaults that failed, to Moscow’s push along the southern axis towards Odessa and past Mariupol, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had one goal: to conquest Ukraine and create a puppet government or client country to serve as a buffer against what he regards to be NATO expansionism.
The likelihood of Russia accepting a status quo in Ukraine was slim. This is despite the fact that President Volodymyr Zilensky’s government has been moving towards NATO. Russia chose war as its only option, and its effects have been felt across the globe.
NATO takes steps to support
NATO was confronted with the prospect that Russia would overthrow the elected government of a neighboring country. But, this was not a uniform approach since members such as Germany were bound to Russia’s energy sector and national interests. The UK provided the initial support. This included infantry and antitank weapons like the NLAW. It played a significant role in allowing Ukrainian personnel to meet Russian units and columns with at least a technological parity and sometimes an advantage.
In the months ahead, NATO countries pledged large amounts of financial and equipment support for Ukraine. This included artillery systems and guided rocket launchers, armoured personnel, infantry carriers, small arms and munitions, as well as training and other critical battlefield capabilities.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s President, made a rare visit outside of Ukraine on 21 December 2013 and met with US officials in Washington, DC. It was there that the US announced it would send the Patriot air defense missile systems to Kyiv as part of its fight against Russia. In addition to the most recent round of equipment, the US offered or promised more than 11,000 military platform for land, sea and air domains (crewed as well uncrewed) along with more than 105,000,000 small arms, mortar and artillery munitions, among other high-end weapons.
Platforms offered included Mi-17 helicopters, T-72 tanks, western equipment like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System 155mm, 122mm and 105mm artillery, as well as armoured mobility vehicles such the M113, M1117, or Mine Resistant Protected Vehicles also known as MRAPs.
Ukraine’s military will adopt a more European-US orientation as a result of increased NATO-standard equipment use and required training provided by NATO forces in the UK and Germany. For the foreseeable future, however, Russian-origin design will be a predominant part of Ukraine’s military structures. The defense industrial base is already producing land and air equipment using adapted Russian designs.
We will tell NATO allies, unless they defend themselves properly, that we will be moving our forces to the Pacific.
Josh Hawley from the US Republican Party
This was largely to replace equipment lost by Ukrainian forces. In the first 10 months, there was a level in which equipment was destroyed that has not been seen since the Second World War. Open-source data indicates that the combined losses of the two combatants were more than 11,000 military platform to the end 2022.
The equipment losses suffered during the conflict between Ukraine and Russia outweigh those sustained in the intense urban fighting that erupted during Russia’s Chechen wars of the 1990s, 2000s. GlobalData used open-source intelligence from Oryx to analyze data and found that the total equipment loss of all Chechen war participants was 1,059 pieces. This includes 412 infantry fighting vehicle.
More than 200 tanks, as well as a few artillery items, were also destroyed in fighting. Combatants also lost 75 rotary-wing platforms and other airborne assets. Analyses show that the Russo/Ukrainian war, which lasted from 24 February to 21 December, saw the destruction of a total of 11,128 pieces each of the combatants’ military equipment. This includes 2,021 tanks as well as 2,287 platforms, which can be classified as infantry fighting vehicles.
Artillery is widely considered to have a decisive impact on the battlefield. However, 390 units were lost by both sides. This was likely due to counter-battery and airstrike as well as losses from battlefield retreats or corresponding advances.
Although combat in the air was intense in the first weeks of war, aerial action declined as platforms and pilots lost and antiaccess, area denial areas established. Similar numbers of rotary-wing aircraft were destroyed in Ukraine (100), as in Chechnya. However, fixed-wing aircraft losses are much higher in the skies above Ukraine (122) than in Russia’s Chechnya combat operations (12).
Latest analysis has shown that total Russian equipment loss in the ongoing war in Ukraine is 8,515 by 21 December. However, the Ukrainian military has lost 2,613 pieces during combat. Both sides suffer many casualties.
The armoured culmination
NATO is continuing to prepare a heavy armor package for Ukraine after Germany’s recent decision not to supply its Leopard 2A6 main combat tanks (MBTs), and allows the export of the platform to Kyiv by other operators. However, there are still questions about what this escalation means to the combatants in Ukraine-Russia war as well as the Alliance’s remaining options should the tanks fail to tip the strategic balance on battleground.
After it failed to promise a Leopard 2 tank for Ukraine at the Ukraine Contact Group meeting held at Ramstein airbase in Germany on 20 January (a move that was widely criticized by both Ukraine and other NATO members), Berlin gave in to NATO pressure. Berlin made a U-turn and confirmed on 24 January that it would send 14 Leopard 2A6 tanks, which allows other European operators to supply their own packages to Ukraine. This is possible with up to half a dozen countries likely to do so. The Ukraine could receive 50-100 Leopard 2A6 tanks. These tanks will include the latest A6 model, as well as older Leopard 1 variants.
Although it is believed that Ukraine claimed that 300 modern MBTs were pledged by NATO and its allies, this claim is not accurate.
“The pressure on Germany to step up lethal aid or at least streamline allied exports has undoubtedly risen due to the mounting urgency of providing critical support before the spring offensives. It was imperative that the Ukrainians could be supplied and trained before the outbreak of fighting, which would complicate planning and logistics,” Tristan Sauer (GlobalData’s land domain analyst), spoke at the time of the German announcement.
Although Slovakia had already sent 28 M55S tanks from its territory to Kyiv, the UK was the western NATO member that committed to sending tanks to Ukraine on 16th January 2023. Following NATO members’ earlier commitments of hundreds and thousands of artillery pieces as well as infantry fighting vehicle, armoured personnel carrier, logistical capabilities, and hundreds of thousands more rounds of ammunition and advanced munitions, the UK now has the option to send modern MBTs (modern MBTs) to Ukraine.
The US has confirmed that the 31 A1 Abrams tanks and a training program for Ukrainian personnel will be handed to Ukraine. In a warning note, however, Pentagon officials stated that the tanks would not soon be delivered to Ukraine. However, the Pentagon plans to purchase new-build vehicles for Kyiv. This means that it is likely that the US will not provide MBTs to Ukraine in 2024.
There are dissenting voices in West
Although support for Ukraine is not unanimous among western countries it is still supported by significant majority of European countries. Leading NATO officials and other leaders issued statements declaring support for Ukraine in the lead-up to the one year anniversary.
A cautionary note is needed following the slight shift of power in Washington DC. following the US midterm elections, which saw some gains for the Republican party as it gained control of the House of Representatives.
Speaking before a gathered audience at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, DC, on 16 February, US Republican Party Senator Josh Hawley stated that the US should end what was termed a “blank cheque” approach to supporting Ukraine and called on European NATO allies to shoulder the burden of preventing the overthrow of President Volodomyr Zelensky in Kyiv, to enable the US to focus on China.
“Our actions in Ukraine are affecting our ability to counter China in the Pacific,” said Hawley, adding that while he had initially voted in favour of giving assistance to Ukraine, the situation had since changed to become “an endless proxy war”.
Continuing, Hawley said it was the US and “not the Europeans” that had sent weapons in large quantities to Ukraine, in quantities “more than all of Europe combined”.
Instead of such actions, Hawley called for a new “nationalist foreign policy” that put US interests first, with Taiwan as top priority. Repeated references in Hawley’s remarks mentioned NATO as an entity separate from the US, although it should be noted that the US is NATO’s single largest military and has de-facto military command of Alliance operations in Europe.
“It is time to tell NATO that it must take first response in defence of Ukraine. This should be the basis for our partnership; Europe take the lead in Europe, and we take the lead against China,” Hawley said. “We will have to tell our NATO allies that unless they defend themselves, we will have to move our forces to the Pacific.”
A decisive year ahead
Ever keen to utilise the symbolic power of anniversaries and notable dates, Russia has pressed ahead with its early offensive around Bakhmut even as winter conditions persist along the front. Conditions, it is understood, are difficult, with Russia’s Wagner Group throwing thousands of newly recruited personnel, often from Russian prisons, into action in Bakhmut in human-wave attacks.
Western officials have said that Russia has thus far been unable to gain significant momentum in its 2023 push, expending large amounts of human capital for minimal gains. However, it should be noted that gains are being made, and the potential remains for Bakhmut to fall to Russia in the days ahead should Kyiv opt to make a tactical withdrawal from the town in a similar manner as it has done so from other urban areas earlier in the war.
Both sides are facing shortages of munitions, with some evidence that Russia is rationing its use of long-range cruise missiles to a small number every fortnight. For Ukraine, the need to maintain stocks is that much more critical as it defends its territory, as much of its industrial base lies inside Russian-occupied territory in the Donbas region.
This makes NATO’s contribution even more crucial, although its member states too are facing difficulties in maintaining the supply of munitions across the ever-more-complex equipment fleets it has donated to Ukraine. Supply chains are facing severe challenges, as countries such as the UK wake up to the emergence of a war economy, which requires far quicker and more regular delivery timetables than had previously been accepted.
Elsewhere, and in recent days China too looks to be pinning its colours more closely to those of Russia’s following the visit of China’s senior diplomat Wang Yi to Moscow. China is likely supplying Russia with non-lethal aid and key items to ensure Moscow can sustain itself in the war, while the risk remains that it will, if it is not already, also supply munitions.
Russia has also called in aid from Iran, a long-time ally, which provided a significant number of loitering munitions to Moscow for use in the conflict, likely with technical expertise or assistance from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
All signs therefore point towards a sustained period of war in Ukraine, barring any strategic breakthrough by either side in the coming spring pushes. The result of this, outside of the geopolitical domain, will be further loss of life and destruction of civilian infrastructure in a country only sustaining itself due to Western support.
Would this support weaken, an emboldened Russia would perhaps be able to prosecute the war more on its own terms, leaving a NATO very much reduced in terms of influence and opening up a global power vacuum likely to be filled by Russia itself, and, in turn, China.
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