January 3rd, 2025

On the Ground

Overall, there has been little change to the front line in the last few days, but Russian forces continue to slowly grind forward. Although there is hard fighting going on along the entire line, the greatest level of activity is from Toretsk south to Velyka Novosilke. Of note, Russian forces continue efforts to “straighten the line" (take small pockets and would-be salients) and keep the Russian line as short as possible, and as free of possible weak point as is possible.

That said, there are no obvious points on the line where there is going to be a breakthrough in the next few days. In fact, there is no reason to believe there is going to be a breakthrough. The reason why is the subject of my ramblings today.

Thoughts

A good friend (and scholar / intelligence officer / Soviet analyst / observer of the human condition) recently pointed out that this is a war of attrition, but I have been reporting terrain gains and loses, not personnel.

Accordingly, today I want to discuss casualties. First, a very short background.

As you’ll recall, the Russian invasion was based on an abysmal strategic assessment that if the Russian army showed up, the Ukrainian army would break, the Ukrainian government would fade away, and the invasion would be a cake walk.

Following that strategic error Russia was left with two options: 1) abandon the field, or 2) apply a low risk strategy to the problem to ensure they could recover from their strategic error. The low risk strategy they applied was to turn this into a war of attrition. The Ukrainians in fact accepted this change, refusing to readily cede ground, and rather to fight for every square foot of terrain. The result has been a tremendous number of casualties - on both sides. 

And make no mistake, Russian generals, as early as the middle of 2022, were telling their subordinates that their mission was “to kill Ukrainians.” 

This has led to a long series of tactical actions that are mis-reported in much of the western press. Russian forces are not “getting bogged down” in various towns, they are using the towns as kill zones. Attack a town, let a fight develop, and then slowly grind the units inside the town - and the town - down to rubble. Russian forces have pounded into dust town after town. They are clearly not interested in “capturing” the towns, as there is usually little to nothing left of them.

Tactically, the war, and this is particularly true of the last 18 months, has been fought overwhelmingly at the platoon level and below.

By that I mean that there are few troops movements or assaults that involve a force larger than a platoon. In fact, on any given day there might be 150 - 200 “assaults” by the Russians. A single assault will involve 1 or more squads, each of 7 - 10 troops, moving on a Ukrainian position. The two or more squads aren’t tightly coordinated, they are simply attacking at the same time in the same general area. The assault usually includes being moved to the forward lines in 1 or 2 armored personnel carriers (APC) and dropped off before the APC is engaged by the Ukrainians. The squad then breaks up into fire teams of 3-4 troops and start working forward. They work forward as far as they can, searching for Ukrainian troops. Once found, the Ukrainians are engaged by the Russians using both their own weapons and whatever else they have available for the day (armed drones (that carry weapons), FPV drones (First Person Video drones (suicide drones), artillery, and aviation if available. 

The attack continues until everyone in the slit trench, bunker, building, etc., in front of them is dead. Then they move on. 

As can be seen, using such tactics, and with the goal of killing Ukrainian soldiers vice taking land as priority one, there is unlikely to be any sort of “breakout."

On any given day a platoon sized attack is unusual and stands out as such. In any given week there might be one or two company sized formations attacking across the entire war zone, and a battalion sized movement is much more rare than that.

So, let’s look at the numbers.

First, the numbers from the battlefield perspective are all, at best, wild guesses. No one is accurately counting bodies. If there are accurate numbers they would be obtained by getting the other guy’s report up echelon as to their casualties. There is no indication that that is what is being reported by either side.

The one fairly authoritative number for Russian casualties is the number produced by a Russian oppositions group - Mediazone - which conducts exhaustive searches of thousands and thousands of Russian websites to find reports of individual family members who have died in combat. These numbers have tracked remarkably close to estimates by various outside observers who have used confirmed reports of various units and then scaled up those numbers to get estimates.

Mediazone reports that current Russian dead (end of December 2024) is just short of 87,000 and give an upper bound of 120,000 to that number. Checking of their numbers shows that about 17,000 have did in the last 100 days - the period of the renewed Russian “offensive.”

How many wounded does that translate into? Between 3.5 and 4 times that. Using the widest range of numbers (87,000 and 120,000 KIA), yields WIA numbers of 305,000 - 480,000. This would mean total Russian casualties - maximum numbers, 120,000 KIA and 480,000 WIA and roughly 15,000 desertion - so, total maximum casualties of 615,000, minimum casualties 407,000.

Note that the Ukrainian General Staff claim of 40,000+ Russian casualties per month simply does not bear up under close scrutiny and probably overstates the case by at least 100% (they are more than doubling the numbers).

What about Ukrainian casualties? No one is reporting on Ukrainian but there are data points that the government has that provide the opportunity to make estimates.

In the first 3 months of the war Ukrainian forces suffered roughly 10,000 KIA and 25,000 WIA (evacuation of wounded was very poor during the first few months). This was before Russian forces switched to a war of attrition. So, after this casualty rates went up, reporting on casualties was suppressed.

Later, after the war of attrition gained momentum, President Zelenskyy commented that they were losing 100 - 200 killed per day. Digging through the available data showed that number was simply 200 per day.

Various overall numbers were later released. President Zelenskyy noted 31,000 KIA by December of 2023, but that was hardly credible. It should also be noted that there were hints that the official designation of “Killed In Action” was tightly controlled. (Other countries do this - DOD numbers on dead in Vietnam and what was a “KIA” led to some fairly significant differences in numbers.) Zelenskyy’s numbers would suggest just 21,000 KIA in 19 months. And in fact, a member of the Verkhovna Rada later commented that from September 1st to August 31st 2023 and again for the same period ending in 2024, the Ukrainians had suffered 38,000 KIA, 19,000 per year. That represents half the rate of losses from before the start of the war of attrition.

On the other hand, President of the EU von der Leyen posted a statement at the end of 2022 that Ukraine had already suffered 100,000 KIAs. She then changed the number to total casualties, then deleted the numbers completely.

Elsewhere, a series of polls has shown far higher casualty rates. Perhaps of greatest note were polls among Ukrainians, one of which showed that 77% have lost a friend in the war and 22% have lost a family member in the war. Depending on what statistics you use to sift through those numbers the results are disturbing; the lowest estimate of KIAs based on these two numbers places Ukrainian KIAs at more than 160,000, and perhaps over 200,000.

Using my own tracking methods and estimating based on what data I could find, my most conservative number for current Ukrainian losses is 108,000 KIA and 375,000 WIA. But, the more likely numbers are 160,000 KIA and 640,000 WIA.

In addition, Ukrainian desertions are tremendous. As of the middle of December it was being reported by several different sources that there were more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers who had been charged with desertion. 

Giving credence to this huge number is a recent story that a Ukrainian brigade (nominally 3,500 troops) formed in March, and now in France, receiving training, has had more than 1700 desertions.

Finally, there is the larger problem behind these casualties: Ukrainian demographics. In 1991 Ukraine had a total population of 52 million. In 2022, just before the war started, the population was listed as 43 million, but perhaps 3 million had already moved west into the rest of Europe.

Following the start of the war more than 6.8 million sought refuge in Europe, per the  UN High Commission in Refugees (UNHCR). The current population of Ukraine is listed at 33 million but the best estimate is that it is now less than 28 million.

All said differently, Russia is suffering huge losses, but in absolute terms, Ukraine’s losses are probably worse. When taken as a whole, against the fact that Russia has a population of nearly 150 million (5 times larger than Ukraine), the war of attrition is not sustainable. The fact that recruiting is a problem, and desertions are a huge problem is suggestive that these numbers, if not exactly accurate, are close enough to capture the essence of the problem.

All said differently again, Ukraine needs to change its strategy.

v/r pete