Ukraine

Ukraine: What are Russia’s Real Battlefield Losses?

Over-reporting enemy losses, under-reporting of your own — that’s normal in war when truth is the first casualty. How can we arrive at any sort of realistic assessment?

What I’ve compared

I’ve taken a look at what’s been publicised by Ukraine and by an open-source intelligence organisation, Oryx* about Russian combat losses in Ukraine.

Data relates to ‘as reported’ up to 1 April 2022. I do not attach any significance to the date of 1 April in this context.

Data such as military personnel casualties is one of those on which the US Government, for example, issues estimates. Those estimates are typically of the order of 50% of those ‘claimed’ by Ukraine. I’m not assessing personnel losses in this story.

The hardest — and by that I mean the least vague — data relates to armour and other matériel which is most precisely defined by Oryx in their database and for which photographs are supplied, for example this T 72A tank:

Correlation of that data classification with Ukraine’s issued data as in the headline image should be reasonable, but see my qualification in the Conclusions.

So, for this story I’ve kept it simple and just looked at:

• tanks
• helicopters
• aircraft (excluding UAVs)

I’ve compared them and then tried to arrive at a reasonable conclusion.

The numbers

Tanks

Ukraine claim 625 Oryx report 368 (includes 42 abandoned and 149 captured)

Helicopters

Ukraine claim 131 Oryx report 38 (includes 3 damaged and 2 abandoned)

Aircraft

This excludes UAVs and variants of UAVs e.g. UACV.

Ukraine claim 143 Oryx report 17 (includes 1 damaged)

Gross losses

For all categories, excluding personnel, Ukraine reported approximately 4532 pieces (see the headline photo).

Oryx reported 2212 pieces including damaged: 41, abandoned: 234, captured: 815.

Conclusions

One other important point to note is that the claim on the given day by Ukraine could well be accurate, but differs from Oryx because of time lags in data gathering and validation at Oryx, which is perfectly understandable. This is likely to lead to a significant difference.

There was a time when I would have run a correlation program to take both sets of data and establish the likely time lag, but that’s too big an exercise for me now and what would it prove, anyway, given the fog of war?

The only time we’ll know for sure (if that will really mean anything anyway) is when all the numbers are in and the war is over.

And then there will be even more puzzling. That’s because of course that the Ukraine is utilising much of the abandoned and captured matériel. Much of Ukraine’s military equipment, its helicopters, armour and other weapons is ex-Soviet and its personnel are trained in their use. They’re going back to the front line.

Just look at the total numbers Oryx reported:

Damaged: 41, abandoned: 234, captured: 815. Total 1090, or almost 50% of the total reported Russian losses of 2212.

The tanks and other usable armour and artillery will be welcome by Ukraine, as well as the AA missile systems:

And even the destroyed pieces can be cannibalised for spare parts.

So, what’s the reality of the losses? I doubt we’ll ever know. But this new approach to wartime loss reporting is interesting. I’m sure that what we are seeing here differs quite a bit from the numbers that Putin is seeing.

*Qualification: reading Oryx’s blog one might form the impression that they have a bias towards Ukraine. However, given their declared methodology and data validation techniques I am inclined to accept their data at face value.

I’ve written elsewhere about open source intelligence, taking a stab at finding out more about it:

In the responses to this particular story as there’s an interesting comment about data collection from Alexander Novikov, which I’ll include here:

I think the difference is just simply because of them collecting data on documented losses. Let’s say if you are using a laser-guided weapon to hit a tank you need to stand around and keep illuminating it till the missile hits, so you can also keep shooting a video of your attack. But if you are using a fire-and-forget weapon such as Javelin, you fire it and run away because next moment, everyone starts shooting at you. This is why for example, we have plenty of videos of tanks being destroyed by systems such as Stugna and none yet by the Javelin, although there’s no doubt the latter is a more capable and as well more massively deployed system. No one wants to further risk their life just to make a cool video — and with Stugna, they have to, anyway. — Alexander Novikov

Thanks Alexander.

An alternative perspective

And there is an alternative perspective from one of the respondents to this story. In the interests of balance I’ll reproduce it here:

I would take the Onyx numbers and divide it by 5 or 10 to get an accurate estimate of Russian losses. I trust the Russian Ministry of Defense much more than any western mainstream source or any western person reporting on this just to get hits on medium.

Why divide by 5 or by 10? I see no rational basis for those numbers which offer such wide variation in estimates between them.

I’ll write later on the ethics of war reporting — and getting hits here on Medium — but for now please be assured that I have thought hard about it. Sorry if that sounds pompous, but there it is.

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…the fog of war, and trying to gain some clarity

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