Avalanche of dead and wounded, heaps of destroyed equipment, massive exodus of refugees: two weeks after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the human and material toll of the most serious military conflict in Europe since the Second World War gives the Vertigo.
Military killed by the thousands
The heavy toll that emerges after 14 days of conflict bears witness to the intensity of the fighting.
While the available data is questionable, Russia, which has committed more than 150,000 soldiers to the battle, is undeniably suffering heavy losses.
In the only official Russian report available, published on March 2, Moscow reported nearly 500 soldiers killed and 1,600 wounded in its ranks, ie a daily average of around 80 soldiers killed and more than 260 wounded. Numbers very likely to be understated.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon for its part evoked an estimate of between 2,000 and 4,000 Russian deaths in 14 days of conflict, or between 153 and 307 deaths per day. With the ratio of three wounded for one dead announced by Moscow, the Russian army would have between 6,000 and 12,000 wounded.
By comparison, some 4,000 American soldiers were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2021. In Afghanistan, a twenty-year conflict against the Taliban, 2,500 American soldiers did not return.
France, which has been fighting against jihadist groups in the Sahel since 2013, has lost 53 soldiers there in eight years.
High intensity
With the conflict in Ukraine, “the world is rediscovering high-intensity combat”, comments Pierre Razoux, academic director of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies (FMES).
He recalls that attrition reached the same proportions during the war in Chechnya (1994-1996), or the Israeli-Arab war of Yom Kippur (1973), during which “in three weeks the Israelis had 3,000 dead and 9,000 wounded”.
“During the Iran-Iraq war, the figures even reached 1,000 deaths a day during the major offensives,” he notes.
In Ukraine, the toll promises to increase if the Russians launch an assault on the big cities where the Ukrainian forces, entrenched, will have major tactical advantages.
“If Ukrainian forces continue to inflict casualties on the Russian military at the current rate, Putin will have to start thinking about a viable exit strategy,” said researcher Gustav Gressel, in a note from the European Council on Foreign Relations research center ( ECFR).
For its part, Kiev did not give an assessment of its losses. Moscow claimed in early March that 2,800 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed.
Hundreds of tanks destroyed
Tanks in flames, armored vehicles destroyed, trucks abandoned on the side of the roads,… The images show heavy damage to military equipment.
The toll of Russian losses put forward by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, probably inflated, mentions 81 helicopters, 317 tanks, a thousand armored vehicles, 120 artillery guns, 28 air defense vehicles, 56 rocket launchers ( Grad type), 60 tank trucks, 7 operational and tactical drones and three ships.
The site oryxspioenkop.com, which lists only visually documented Ukrainian and Russian material losses on the battlefield (photo or video in support), notably reported on Wednesday 151 tanks lost to Russia, nearly 300 armored vehicles, 10 fighter planes and 11 helicopters, against 46 tanks lost by the Ukrainians, less than a hundred tanks, 5 fighter planes and two ships.
Civilians killed and exiled
The conflict that began on February 24 has caused one of the most serious humanitarian crises on the continent. More than 2 million people have already fled to take refuge abroad, mainly in Poland, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Europe expects to receive five million refugees.
On the ground, the intensification of the bombardments against several Ukrainian cities promises to increase the number of killed among the civilian population trapped. Since the start of the war, at least 474 civilians have been killed and 861 injured, according to the latest UN tally, which stresses that its tolls are probably much lower than the reality.
According to CIA Director William Burns, it is “likely” that Russian President Vladimir Putin will “redouble efforts and attempt to crush the Ukrainian military regardless of civilian casualties”.