The war in Ukraine is consolidated as the deadliest conflict for Russian troops since World War II, in which it fought as the main country of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945, when the ratio of dead to wounded in combat is evaluated.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry released this Friday (25), there were 1,351 soldiers killed and 3,825 wounded in the first 30 days of combat. It was the first swing since the 2nd, at the end of the first week of the invasion.
The release of official data, impossible to prove authentic at this point, seeks a counterpoint to the estimates of his opponents, who paint the war as a complete military disaster for Vladimir Putin so far.
Ukraine’s Armed Forces speak of 16,000 dead invading soldiers, among the approximately 200,000 who were initially mobilized for the conflict, over four months of fake Russian military exercises. NATO, the western military alliance, leaked to reporters in Brussels that the figure would be 40,000, which seems as clear an exaggeration as Moscow’s low number.
Be that as it may, that doesn’t change the fact that Russia has performed poorly in terms of survival of its soldiers in the face of fierce Kiev-style guerrilla resistance. The ratio of dead to injured, which determines the effectiveness of personal protection, first aid and removal to hospitals, is at 1 to 2.7.
It’s even worse than the 1 to 3.2 from the first half, this using official data that may be understated. It is a number comparable to the most violent conflict in human history, World War II, called the Great Patriotic War in Russia.
There, the rate went from 1 to 2.57. Of course, the human scale is unparalleled. If 45 soldiers died a day now, in the fight against Nazi Germany after Adolf Hitler betrayed the pact he had with Josef Stalin, 5,650 Soviets fell at the end of each day.
That said, it’s the worst Russian proportional performance since. In the ten-year occupation of Afghanistan, which ended with defeat in 1989, Moscow the ratio was 1 to 5, similar to that recorded in the first Chechnya war (1994-96), although the numbers there are too murky to be taken at the foot of the letter. In Georgia in 2008, conflict similar in origin to the current one, it was 1 to 4.3.
Modern armies aim for a 1 to 10 ratio, not always achievable. The United States went from 1 to 5.2 in the Vietnam War (1955-1975) to 1 to 8.6 in its 20 years of Afghan occupation, which ended in 2021 in a shameful retreat. In Iraq (2003-11), the most violent clash, it went from 1 to 7.
The ministry also sought to ward off criticism about the progress of the operation. There is consensus among Western analysts that Putin did not achieve a quick defeat as he intended, in addition to having made several tactical mistakes on the ground.
“The operation is proceeding as planned,” Defense Spokesperson General Igor Konachenkov said in a statement. He said the objectives of the “first phase of the military operation” are almost all fulfilled, seeking to emphasize the idea that this will be a long war and that the Kremlin did not expect an immediate capitulation by Kiev.
The first part of the statement is true: everything indicates that the conflict will be prolonged, of friction. The second, the reality on the ground does not allow for corroboration, although it is impossible to know exactly what Putin’s plan was. Konachenkov said that 93% of the historic territory of Lugansk province, for example, has been retaken.
The situation in the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, which since 2014 have controlled parts of eastern Ukraine, was one of the central justifications for the war. Putin recognized them three days before the attack, received a cry for help and went to arms.
The theater included a reality, which was the will of the pro-Russian rebels to occupy the entire region that previously comprised the homonymous provinces. With the eventual fall of Mariupol, a port in the former Donetsk region under brutal siege by the Russians, a corridor will be established from the so-called Donbass to Crimea, annexed by Putin in 2014.
On Friday, the government in Kiev admitted the Russians’ “partial success” in the endeavor, which, given the degree of propaganda in the Ukrainian military’s advertisements, could spell an imminent end for Mariupol. Defending such a stretch of land, should the war end there, is another story: it is relatively narrow, which suggests further Russian advances to the north against Ukrainian forces fighting the separatists.
