It was only there for a short while. Monday evening, the Kremlin-affiliated newspaper wrote Komsomolskaya Pravda on the basis of the Russian Defense Ministry that 9,861 Russian soldiers had been killed in Ukraine. The text soon disappeared from the site – but by then it had already been widely noticed. The newspaper later claimed to have been hacked.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, there has been great uncertainty about the numbers of victims, both among civilians and among military personnel. As the conflict intensifies and becomes more unclear, more people die, but precise figures disappear from view.
Until Monday evening, the only figure quoted from the Russian side was 498 killed soldiers. Ukraine kept it at more than 15,000 ‘losses’ on the Russian side.
Skepticism about numbers
But these government figures should be viewed with great skepticism, according to analysts. “I’m trying to follow it, but I’ve decided for myself that we won’t know exactly how many victims until later,” said Lithuanian political scientist Nerijus Maliukevicius, who specializes in communication during conflicts and is affiliated with Vilnius University.
As far as he is concerned, there are all kinds of ambiguities about Ukraine’s figures: how does a government confirm in wartime that someone has been killed? Should that have been observed from afar, or should the body really have been identified up close?
In addition, figures can be used to keep the morale of one’s own troops high. It is tempting to count as many people as possible as victims – including the injured. Ukraine is obscuring this by publishing lists of Russian ‘battle losses’ – a term that does not clarify the nature of the victims.
Meanwhile, hardly any figures are released about Ukrainian losses. said a week ago President Zelensky that 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers were killed† Furthermore, neither Ukrainians nor Russians are generous with information about the losses on the Ukrainian side.
The fact that a Russian figure was briefly online on Monday evening reinforces the impression given by Ukraine that the Russian losses are large. The figure does not deviate much from the attempts made by third parties to estimate military losses. Every few days, American intelligence services present their estimates of the number of fallen Russian soldiers. The most recent figure, from last week, is 7,000. The US claims that its figures are based on all kinds of sources: news media, but also satellite and video images.
For example, intelligence services can estimate how many soldiers have died on the basis of images of destroyed tanks, since they know how many soldiers are usually in one tank.
This approach corresponds to what research collective Bellingcat did. “What we’re doing is looking at the amount of weapons, tanks, planes and transport vehicles destroyed. Then we look at how many people were involved at least,” Bellingcat researcher Christo Grozev explained to journalists earlier this month. His club then reached 1,000 to 3,000 soldiers who died in a few days. Bellingcat has since stopped counting, as it focuses on establishing war crimes.
Counting civilian deaths
The civilian death count is more precise – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t blind spots. The civilian deaths are tracked by the United Nations, which counts meticulously and registers a dead only when they are sure of their case.
That is complex and time-consuming – not to mention the dangerous situation in Ukraine, which makes counting difficult to say the least. A spokesman for the UN says by email that there are about fifty people from a UN human rights mission in Ukraine. They have been monitoring victims in the country since 2014. To do this, they speak with witnesses, analyze (satellite) photos and videos, and make use of local contacts, such as in hospitals. If, after checking that evidence, the team has a ‘reasonable’ suspicion that there is a civilian casualty, it counts.
The problem with this approach is that it works especially well in ‘dormant’ conflicts, as was the case in eastern Ukraine until the end of February, with relatively few casualties at the time. In a massive conflict zone, with intense fighting and bloody sieges, the approach yields very low numbers. So far, the UN has confirmed 847 civilian deaths. “Our method implies that the actual number is higher,” said the spokesman.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of March 23, 2022
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