While Western experts agree in estimating that several thousand Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the invasion in Ukraine, almost no information filters on the other hand on the losses of the Ukrainian army, which has been resisting tenaciously for nearly of five weeks.
“We don’t know much about the attrition rate of the Ukrainian forces. In reality, we don’t know anything about it,” sums up Michael Kofman, an expert at the American think tank CNA.
Logically in times of war, Russians like Ukrainians are stingy with data on their human losses. And the official figures, which are impossible to verify, are probably underestimated for propaganda purposes.
The Russian general staff acknowledged on Friday the death of 1,351 of its soldiers for 3,825 wounded, after an initial official report in early March of nearly 500 dead.
NATO estimates, for its part, that of the 150,000 to 200,000 Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine, between 30,000 and 40,000 of them are no longer fit to fight, either because they were killed, or because they were wounded or taken prisoner, after an entry into the war which brought to light major tactical and logistical weaknesses.
kyiv, for its part, has also given only two reports since February 24. The latest, dated March 12, reports 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers killed. According to the standard ratio according to which, in time of war, an army has three wounded soldiers for each soldier killed, the Ukrainian army would have at the very least more than 5000 men disabled. A figure, again, probably below reality.
On the Ukrainian side, “the question of resources is a major factor of uncertainty, due to the effectiveness of kyiv’s propaganda and the ‘informational discipline’ of the fighters. We therefore do not know the state of the Ukrainian order of battle, which must also have suffered heavy losses, ”underlines a recent note from the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS).
defense advantage
Despite everything, it would seem that the Ukrainian army, in a defensive position, suffered fewer losses than the Russian army, according to several observers.
“The conflict in Ukraine provides an excellent demonstration of the Clausewitzian principle according to which the defensive force wears out less than that which is on the attack”, notes the FRS. “This is all the more true since the Ukrainian forces have adopted tactical modes of action that often relate more to high-tech guerrilla warfare than to conventional confrontation to avoid Russian firepower”.
This is evidenced in particular by the material losses recorded by the site oryxspioenkop.com, on the basis of photos or videos collected on the battlefield: on Tuesday, the site counted 318 tanks lost (destroyed, damaged, abandoned or captured) for Russia, more than 550 armored vehicles, 16 fighter planes, 35 helicopters and 2 ships, against 79 tanks lost by the Ukrainians, less than 200 armored vehicles, 12 fighter planes and 13 ships.
“The Ukrainians were perfectly prepared, they had perfectly dispersed their means”, argues a Western military source.
Ukrainian capabilities are certainly more limited than those of the Russian army. But the conflict that began in 2014 against the pro-Russian separatists in Donbass led the pro-Western Ukrainian authorities to bring its army closer to NATO standards. The military budget has tripled to over €3.5 billion in 2021, and reforms have been passed to improve command.
The United States has provided $2.5 billion in military aid to the country since 2014, and instructors from NATO allies, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, have taught combat readiness.
The army also benefits from the crucial contribution of foreign weapons, in particular the TB2 combat drones from the Turkish manufacturer Bayraktar, or the British and American anti-tank missiles, which the NATO countries have continued to supply to the country since the beginning. of the conflict.
Finally, if on paper the balance of power is overwhelming in favor of the Russians, the Ukrainians have a large reservoir of forces. To the 130,000 men of the land task force are added hundreds of thousands of reservists and battalions of volunteers.
“Ukrainian losses are probably substantial, but their fighting forces are actually greater [que celles des Russes], because they have thousands of Ukrainian and foreign volunteers,” a British armed conflict expert told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity. Thus, “the number of individuals is not a problem for Ukraine”, he believes.