Ukraine loses fewer soldiers than Russia, but it is still losing the war

The war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine is killing soldiers at a rate not seen in Europe since World War II.

Ukrainian artillery fire, explosive drones and mines are killing Russian forces as they repeatedly attack across no man’s land. With Ukrainian positions exposed, they suffer heavy losses inflicted by Russian drones, missiles, and glide bombs from afar.

Calculating the scale of human losses, and thus the course of the war, is difficult: the information is considered state secrets in both countries. The Ukrainian government has been particularly secretive, restricting access to demographic data that could be used to estimate its losses.

The most complete census of dead Ukrainian soldiers is conducted by groups abroad with biased or ambiguous motives.

Dealing with incomplete information, these groups and other experts estimate that Ukraine has suffered about half of Russia’s irrecoverable losses — deaths and injuries that take soldiers out of battle indefinitely — in the nearly three-year war.

Russia still wins. A much larger population and more effective recruitment allowed it to do so Replace losses Franz Stefan Gade, a Vienna-based military analyst, said this step would be more effective, moving forward gradually.

“The fat man gets thinner. But the thin man dies,” said Mr. Gaddy.

Counting the dead

The most complete publicly available statistics for Ukrainian deaths come from two opaque websites that track obituaries, posthumous medal awards, funeral announcements and other death-related information posted online.

Websites — information and UAlosses.org – yielded similar results: each of them separately counted about 62,000 Ukrainian soldiers who had died since the invasion.

Losstarmour and UALosses say they can only find some dead soldiers, because deaths are published late, and some deaths are never announced at all. Losstarmore estimates that more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers were dead by December, in total.

In comparison, Russian researchers and journalists have used similar methods to estimate what Russia has done He suffered more than 150,000 battlefield deaths Until the end of November.

The Lustarmore Victims Project is run by about 10 anonymous volunteers, mostly Russian, who surf the Internet and check information for authenticity, a website spokesperson said in an email response to questions. The group appears to sympathize with Russia and seeks to discredit Ukrainian propaganda.

The person claiming to be running UALosses told The New York Times in a message exchanged on X that he is an IT professional based in a Western country and started his project to address a public knowledge gap. He said he has no ties to Ukraine or Russia and works anonymously to avoid legal and personal risks. The Times was unable to confirm those personal details.

The Ukrainian government has accused UALosses of “spreading false information,” and appears to periodically block the site. Lostarmour website is blocked in Ukraine, like all other websites registered in Russia.

The sites’ secrecy or ideological bias does not necessarily invalidate my findings. Independent Russian media outlet Mediazona and Ukrainian non-profit organization Memory book We separately verified some of the UALosses data by sampling random counts and matching them to online deaths.

The Times’s statistical analysis of Losstarmour’s public data found that at least 95 percent of the group’s entries are accurate with a 95 percent certainty and a 5 percent margin of error.

Intelligence estimates

In a rare move, a prominent Ukrainian public figure contradicted him in December Official claims of victims in the country.

Independent war correspondent Yuri Butusov he announced to his 1.2 million YouTube subscribers Sources inside the Ukrainian Armed Forces headquarters told him that 105,000 soldiers were “irretrievably lost,” including 70,000 dead and 35,000 missing. 43,000 soldiers who President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed were killed As of December 8th.

Mr. Butusov added that his figure did not include units outside the Armed Forces Command, such as the National Guard. This would increase the total number of casualties.

A military analyst familiar with Western governments’ assessments of Ukrainian casualties said Butusov’s numbers were reliable. The analyst discussed sensitive information on condition of anonymity.

Western intelligence agencies have been reluctant to reveal their internal accounts of Ukrainian losses for fear of undermining an ally. US officials have previously said that Kyiv is withholding this information even from its closest allies.

Rare estimates of Ukrainian casualties provided by Western officials far exceed official figures in Kyiv. US officials told The Times in 2023 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died by August of that year. Many of the bloodiest battles of the war have been fought since then.

Mr. Butusov’s casualty figure does not include serious casualties, a crucial aspect of the army’s combat capability.

Missing in action, and in statistics

Adding to the uncertainty surrounding losses in Ukraine is the large number of soldiers that Ukraine declared missing during the fighting.

About 59,000 Ukrainians were registered as missing in December, most of them soldiers, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Butusov said in December that 35,000 members of the armed forces were listed as missing.

The military analyst familiar with Western assessments said he believed the vast majority of missing Ukrainian soldiers were dead.

Ukrainian law makes it difficult for relatives of missing men to announce their deaths, whether for inheritance or other purposes. This has created a legal purgatory for families whose loved ones were not recovered from the battlefield, keeping casualty numbers artificially low.

Alyona Bondar, a Ukrainian café worker, said she had not received any information about her soldier brother since he disappeared on the battlefield in southern Ukraine in 2023.

“It would be better to tell the truth, including for my brother,” she said in a phone interview. “It would be better to have a grave to visit, rather than him lying somewhere in a field for a year and a half.”

Combat deaths are only one aspect of the army’s attrition. The most comprehensive measure is irreparable, or irreparable, casualties: the total number of deaths and serious injuries that prevent a soldier from fighting again.

What does it mean

Combining the estimates, with their caveats and shortcomings, analysts conclude that Russia loses slightly less than two soldiers to death and serious injury for every Ukrainian fighter who suffers the same fate.

This percentage did not allow Ukraine to overcome the demographic and recruitment advantages enjoyed by Russia. Under current trends, Ukraine is losing a larger share of its smaller military.

There are currently more than 400,000 Russians facing about 250,000 Ukrainians on the front line, and the gap between the armies is widening, according to a military analyst familiar with Western assessments.

Russia has managed to rebuild, and even expand, its exhausted invasion force by exploiting a population four times larger than that of Ukraine, implementing its first draft since World War II and recruiting criminals and debtors. So is the government of Russia’s authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin Pay increased bonuses to new recruitsAnd the pressure started recently Persons accused of crimes for recruitment In exchange for dropping the charges.

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These recruitment efforts brought Russia between 600 and 1,000 new fighters per day last year, according to Russian financial statistics. Kyiv only matched this rate briefly in that period.

North Korea too He sent about 11 thousand soldiers To assist Russian forces in the Kursk region of southern Russia, where the Ukrainians took control of the region last summer.

Mr. Zelensky’s need to engage with public opinion led his government to delay an unpopular draft, then leave it struggling to impose it. Some men have He went into hiding to evade compulsory conscriptionor bribery Project officers To obtain the exemption. Late conscription of convicts in Ukraine It produced a small percentage of fighters recruited from Russian prisons.

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The recruiting gap ultimately shapes the battleground.

Russia is losing more men. But every Ukrainian casualty brings the Kremlin closer to victory.

Daria Mityuk and Yuri Shevala He contributed reporting from Kyiv and Oleg Matznev From Berlin.