More than three months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “we are in something that we have not seen in Europe since the Second World War” on the question of human losses, estimates Friday, May 27 on franceinfo Jean-Dominique Merchet, journalist at Opinionspecialist in military matters and author of the Secret Défense blog. “We must be at something like 300 deaths a day”continues the specialist, “it is enormous”.
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franceinfo: Can we know on both sides how many victims this war has already caused?
Jean-Dominique Merchet: In reality, no. We cannot know precisely, there are only assessments, moreover on the losses on the Russian side. The French services speak of 15 to 20,000 dead. And all this concerns the military personnel because the civilian losses are even more unknown. There is still a curtain of silence on the side of the Ukrainian authorities, they say nothing. It is therefore very difficult to know what it really is.
Is it a conflict clearly more deadly than others?
It’s absolutely huge. If we make comparisons, the Russians would have lost in three months, in terms of deaths, about as much as they had lost in Afghanistan over ten years.
“For comparison, the French army in Algeria lost 25,000 men. There, it’s 15,000 dead in three months, these are considerable figures.”
Jean-Dominique Merchet, journalist at L’Opinionat franceinfo
If we add the Russians and the Ukrainians, we must be at something like 300 deaths a day. We are therefore effectively in something that we have not seen in Europe since the Second World War.
Russia is so big and its population so numerous that one imagines it could again mobilize immense troops?
It is largely an illusion because it is an asymmetric war. On the one hand, there is the Russian army, a professional expeditionary army which does not appeal to en masse, to conscription, which does not send its young people, it only sends volunteers. Opposite, we have Ukraine, a country of 40 million inhabitants which has mobilized its population very massively.
Today, in terms of manpower reserves, the Ukrainians are far beyond what the Russians can provide. They have capacities in terms of higher numbers, of the order of double or triple. For the moment, politically, it seems very complicated for the Russian authorities to decree that. It would mean that we must recognize the failure of his operation. And is Russian society ready to accept it? We don’t know, the Kremlin’s ability to impose things on its population is more limited than we think today.