On the sidelines of the ongoing invasion in Ukraine, a war of numbers continues between kyiv and Moscow over the civilian and military casualties of this conflict, while different bodies and intelligence agencies try to dissect various data and satellite images to arrive at their own balance sheet. Three experts take stock of these discordant data.
“The first casualty of war is the truth,” blurts out military sociology specialist and professor at the Canadian Forces College, Éric Ouellet, when asked about the divergent assessments made regarding the victims of the ongoing war in Ukraine for three weeks. “In this war, as in any conflict, there is always a bit of a propaganda war,” also recalls the Associate Vice-Rector for Research at the Royal Military College of Canada, Pierre Jolicoeur.
In Thursday’s update, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, for example, estimated that around 14,000 Russian soldiers have died since the start of this conflict. This is 28 times more than the latest public estimate from the Kremlin, which still puts the number at 498 soldiers killed in action.
The duty could not access the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense on Thursday, but the latter recently claimed on its Facebook page to have destroyed 182 Ukrainian planes and helicopters since the beginning of this conflict, as well as 1,393 armored vehicles. The ministry also takes care not to mention the term “war” in its public communications, where it rather refers to “humanitarian operations” in devastated cities, such as Mariupol.
“The governments of both countries have a good idea of military and civilian casualties. But for fairly obvious reasons, they are not going to share this data because it can work against them, ”says Mr. Ouellet. Russia and Ukraine have an interest in underestimating the number of their soldiers who died at the front to avoid demoralizing the troops and – in the case of kyiv – the local population resisting the invasion.
“The problem with these data is that both governments have an advantage in exaggerating the losses on the other side”, also recalls the professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia Allen Sens, who specializes in international security matters. Thus, “government data are probably the least credible,” says the expert.
Independent sources
The experts consulted by The duty thus believe that it is preferable, in order to have a more realistic overview of the military victims of this conflict, to turn to Western intelligence agencies, which base their assessments on the cross-checking of various data, including information from local sources on terrain and satellite images of towns devastated by the ongoing conflict. On Wednesday, Pentagon officials quoted by the New York Times thus estimated at around 7,000 the number of Russian soldiers who have perished so far.
The U.S. Department of Defense said more than 980 missiles have been fired into Ukraine so far by Russia, in a situation update posted on its website Wednesday. Its British counterpart, for its part, publishes daily on social networks an update on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. “These are probably the sources I trust the most” because of the “rigor” of their calculation methods, says Mr. Sens.
For his part, Mr. Jolicoeur recommends that citizens wishing to consult a reliable source to follow the evolution of this conflict to base themselves on the detailed reports issued regularly by the Institute for the Study of War, a non-partisan think tank made up of military experts. “It’s probably one of the best sources” to follow the evolution of the conflict in Ukraine, he says.
Civilian casualties
As for the balance sheets of civilian victims of this conflict, they also vary greatly from one source to another. Thus, in the port city of Mariupol alone, the city council has so far reported about 2,500 civilian casualties. However, the United Nations (UN), which publishes a daily census of the victims of this conflict, reported in its most recent assessment, Thursday, of at least 780 civilians killed since the beginning of the Russian invasion, as well as 1252 other wounded.
The UN, however, is acting on the side of caution by only publishing data concerning dead people whose identity has been confirmed, “while we have plenty of deaths that we cannot verify”, raises Mr. Ouellet. “These are very cautious data and undoubtedly much lower than the real figures”, also analyzes Mr. Sens.
Once again, the real state of play could be halfway between the data published by local authorities and those emanating from organizations such as the UN and Human Rights Watch, which has denounced several Russian attacks against civilians. in different cities of Ukraine in the last days.