The Russian army has lost no less than15,000 KIA since Russia widened its war on Ukraine on the night of Feb. 24. Worse for Moscow, the possible death toll—which is impossible to verify—belies much greater losses from wounds and fatigue.
To be clear, both sides are hurting. Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelesnky this weekend uttered the first official statement on the Ukrainian armed forces’ casualty rate when, following a meeting with his Polish counterpart, he defended a law that bars Ukrainian men of fighting age from leaving the country.
Zelensky praised the Ukrainians who’ve willingly stayed and fought. “When today from 50 to 100 people can die in the most difficult direction, the east, they are defending our state and independence,” heIf a hundred Ukrainian combat deaths during the most recent uptick in violence in eastern Ukraine represents a daily high, it’s possible that in 89 days the Ukrainian armed forces have tallied thousands of KIAs. Five thousand? Ten thousand? Neither figure is outside the realm of possibility. It makes sense that Russia’s losses would be higher than Ukraine’s. The Ukrainians generally have been on the defensive, fighting from fortified positions on familiar terrain. Modern warfare favors the defense. Of course, Ukraine is a smaller country than Russian is, with just 44 million people versus Russia’s 144 million. In theory, Russia can absorb more losses. In practice, however, Russia has proved more fragile than the country’s sheer size might indicate. To deploy 125 battalion tactical groups in Ukraine, each with 50 or so armored vehicles and between 500 and 800 people, the army had to mobilize the majority of its forces from across Russia. Owing to poor leadership at every level, from the Kremlin down to small units, those front-line BTGs rolled into Ukraine in pursuit of a losing strategy. Too wide a front for too few forces lacking the necessary coordination and support. An attempt to capture Kyiv ended in defeat for the Russians after a month. A parallel effort to capture the port of Odesa stalled at the halfway mark. The Russian siege of Kharkiv collapsed after two months. This month the Kremlin concentrated its best remaining forces along one narrow front—in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian troops still cling to two small cities on the far side of the Donets River: Lyman in the northern part of the sector andThe handful of Ukrainian brigades in that pocket, together with thousands of troops, have been falling back underSeverodonetsk. The former could fall any day now. The garrison in the latter might soon find itself cut off from its main supply lines. Finally concentrating its forces after losing a third of them has allowed the Russian army to make these small advances across one vulnerable Ukrainian salient. To be very clear: Kyiv’s troops in Lyman and Severodonetsk are in big trouble. But don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Russia does not possess a ready reserve of trained manpower. And it’s already written off sizable proportions of its best armored vehicles, helicopters, fighter planes and patrol boats. Morale could become a problem. Not just in the Russian army’s rank and file, but along the home front, too. “The Russian public has, in the past, proven sensitive to casualties suffered during wars of choice,” the U.K. Defense Ministry explained. “As casualties suffered in Ukraine continue to rise they will become more apparent, and public dissatisfaction with the war and a willingness to voice it may grow.” Ukraine by contrast is continuing to induct fresh troops from a huge pool of enthusiastic volunteers. And a steady flow of donated weaponry from the United States and other NATO and allied countries is giving them something to fight with. If there’s a major constraint on Ukraine’s mobilization, it’s time. It takes weeks if not monthsalso will be no surprise if the Russian army cannot muster the people, firepower and supplies to prolong its advance on terrain that isn’t as favorable to the attacker as the Donbas salient is. Those possible 15,000 dead weigh heavily on the Kremlin’s prospects for any meaningful victory as the war’s fourth month looms.
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