I've heard that Russians declare losses as anyone no longer fit for combat, so - could be half injured/half dead? I really don't know but what does it matter, the UKR's are getting slaughtered.
I adhere to Andrei Martyanov who knows the Russian military, current and past. He says explicitly Russia declares only KIA as losses, unless otherwise explicitly stated. Russia uses terms like "destroyed", "eliminated", etc. They never ever say "wounded" or "killed and wounded" because they just don't track them.
Probably because the Russians expect a significant percentage of the enemy wounded to return to the field later, so they are not properly "irretrievable losses" in a permanent sense. Russia claims 97% of their wounded return to the field because they have proper medical care, whereas a large percentage of Ukrainian wounded die before reaching primary care due to difficulties retrieving the wounded from the battlefield and the long transport times by vehicle (whereas Russia can medevac their wounded out.)
Of course, in this war, if Ukrainian wounded return to the field, they either get wounded again or they get killed, so in the end it doesn't matter. This is probably why the ratio is likely around 1.67 instead of the usual ratio of 2:1 or 3:1, i.e., most of the wounded will end up dead eventually anyway.
You are correct that in the end the Ukrainians are getting annihilated, so the only effect is on how long the war will last if the Russian figures are off by some percentage.
And it still won't be long before it ends because long before the Ukrainians run out of people they will run out of combat and operational effectiveness, which is what really matters. A company that loses 30 out of 100 men might be still combat effective, but probably not operationally effective. A company that loses 50 out of 100 men - and that happens often to the Ukrainians - is both combat and operationally ineffective and has to be pulled off the line and reconstituted with reserves ("reserves" who are probably untrained civilians.) So the impact of losses is magnified beyond the actual numbers of men lost.
That makes sense but still appears high to me. Then again 60k to 100k casualties pm make sense in the context of an original 700k military and many waves of enlistments - and the current parlous state of the uaf.
Thanks for that Richard. The Russian MoD has not included the part two section you quote on its website but it is on its Telegram channel - which is a strange oversight. I have been using the MoD website for my figures so I have been underestimating. I will use the Telegram channel in future. Cheers.
I've just been pulling the figures from the reposts on MoA. I don't follow the MoD daily, I just happened to notice that the figures for the 7th seemed larger than recently. I'm surprised, too, that part two wasn't on the main site; perhaps just a gaffe.
I'll get my figures from the MoD Telegram channel in future.. BTW I didn't get a reply to my mail to b so I decided to post a link to my Update on the MoA. It hasn't been taken down yet.
Yes, I suspect the previous takedowns - if that is what they were and not an action by the site's filter - were random. You know, I hope, that when you post something there when the site is over-loaded or if the filter doesn't like what you posted - for utterly unknown reasons - it will respond that the post was posted - but it actually isn't and won't show on reloading the page.
The filter used to hate my very name and randomly wouldn't post something I wrote. I had to resort to using an alternate user name and email to get it to accept my posts. Then at one point it hated BOTH the user IDs! This was even when I wasn't posting links or something else that might trigger the filter. The filter hates certain kinds of links to certain sites. Everyone has had problems with it. b doesn't control the thing - apparently it's controlled by Typepad - although he can retrieve stuff hidden by it if he's asked politely.
"The enemy losses were up to 110 Ukrainian servicemen..."
Such statements lack a lower limit. How are such statements meant? Strictly speaking such statements were true even if there are 0 losses of Ukrainian servicemen - but that is clearly not how the statements are meant. Does the original Russian text imply a lower limit?
I suspect they merely imply some imprecision, i.e., the Ukrainian unit they hit was estimated to have that many, but the individual bodies weren't counted individually, if for no other reason that that some or many of them were blown to pieces. Any errors introduced by this sort of thing are probably randomly distributed (unless there is some built-in bias) and thus probably even out over time. A difference of X shouldn't matter unless X is some large percentage consistently over time, which is probably not the case, so such an assumption reducing the overall effect of the reported casualties would be unwarranted absent any actual evidence that it occurs.
In other words, best to take the figures as reported as more or less accurate, and sufficiently accurate to warrant the overall conclusion that Ukraine is taking massive casualties on the order of magnitude I've estimated.
Bullshit. Concern troll. Comment ignored.
thanks richard.. cheers james
And thanks again for mentioning the post again over at MoA.
Hi Richard,
How do we know that ‘losses’ represent only KIAs, and don’t include both dead and injured?
Thanks for your articles.
I've heard that Russians declare losses as anyone no longer fit for combat, so - could be half injured/half dead? I really don't know but what does it matter, the UKR's are getting slaughtered.
I adhere to Andrei Martyanov who knows the Russian military, current and past. He says explicitly Russia declares only KIA as losses, unless otherwise explicitly stated. Russia uses terms like "destroyed", "eliminated", etc. They never ever say "wounded" or "killed and wounded" because they just don't track them.
Probably because the Russians expect a significant percentage of the enemy wounded to return to the field later, so they are not properly "irretrievable losses" in a permanent sense. Russia claims 97% of their wounded return to the field because they have proper medical care, whereas a large percentage of Ukrainian wounded die before reaching primary care due to difficulties retrieving the wounded from the battlefield and the long transport times by vehicle (whereas Russia can medevac their wounded out.)
Of course, in this war, if Ukrainian wounded return to the field, they either get wounded again or they get killed, so in the end it doesn't matter. This is probably why the ratio is likely around 1.67 instead of the usual ratio of 2:1 or 3:1, i.e., most of the wounded will end up dead eventually anyway.
You are correct that in the end the Ukrainians are getting annihilated, so the only effect is on how long the war will last if the Russian figures are off by some percentage.
And it still won't be long before it ends because long before the Ukrainians run out of people they will run out of combat and operational effectiveness, which is what really matters. A company that loses 30 out of 100 men might be still combat effective, but probably not operationally effective. A company that loses 50 out of 100 men - and that happens often to the Ukrainians - is both combat and operationally ineffective and has to be pulled off the line and reconstituted with reserves ("reserves" who are probably untrained civilians.) So the impact of losses is magnified beyond the actual numbers of men lost.
That makes sense but still appears high to me. Then again 60k to 100k casualties pm make sense in the context of an original 700k military and many waves of enlistments - and the current parlous state of the uaf.
Terrible numbers 😪
Thanks for that Richard. The Russian MoD has not included the part two section you quote on its website but it is on its Telegram channel - which is a strange oversight. I have been using the MoD website for my figures so I have been underestimating. I will use the Telegram channel in future. Cheers.
I've just been pulling the figures from the reposts on MoA. I don't follow the MoD daily, I just happened to notice that the figures for the 7th seemed larger than recently. I'm surprised, too, that part two wasn't on the main site; perhaps just a gaffe.
I'll get my figures from the MoD Telegram channel in future.. BTW I didn't get a reply to my mail to b so I decided to post a link to my Update on the MoA. It hasn't been taken down yet.
Yes, I suspect the previous takedowns - if that is what they were and not an action by the site's filter - were random. You know, I hope, that when you post something there when the site is over-loaded or if the filter doesn't like what you posted - for utterly unknown reasons - it will respond that the post was posted - but it actually isn't and won't show on reloading the page.
The filter used to hate my very name and randomly wouldn't post something I wrote. I had to resort to using an alternate user name and email to get it to accept my posts. Then at one point it hated BOTH the user IDs! This was even when I wasn't posting links or something else that might trigger the filter. The filter hates certain kinds of links to certain sites. Everyone has had problems with it. b doesn't control the thing - apparently it's controlled by Typepad - although he can retrieve stuff hidden by it if he's asked politely.
Thanks for that Richard. I know very little about how this all works.
"The enemy losses were up to 110 Ukrainian servicemen..."
Such statements lack a lower limit. How are such statements meant? Strictly speaking such statements were true even if there are 0 losses of Ukrainian servicemen - but that is clearly not how the statements are meant. Does the original Russian text imply a lower limit?
I suspect they merely imply some imprecision, i.e., the Ukrainian unit they hit was estimated to have that many, but the individual bodies weren't counted individually, if for no other reason that that some or many of them were blown to pieces. Any errors introduced by this sort of thing are probably randomly distributed (unless there is some built-in bias) and thus probably even out over time. A difference of X shouldn't matter unless X is some large percentage consistently over time, which is probably not the case, so such an assumption reducing the overall effect of the reported casualties would be unwarranted absent any actual evidence that it occurs.
In other words, best to take the figures as reported as more or less accurate, and sufficiently accurate to warrant the overall conclusion that Ukraine is taking massive casualties on the order of magnitude I've estimated.