Here's another example from that article of what that paper considers to be true:
<blockquote> The expert is sure that Russia cannot increase purchases of new equipment purely technically. It is produced very little. As a rule, the army simply removes Soviet equipment from storage and modernizes it. For example, T-80 tanks are upgraded to T-80BVM. "Even if three shifts are introduced at the plants, no one will provide them with materials, working hands, equipment, or components."
Given the loss of equipment at the moment, it will take Russia from three to ten years to restore the number of missiles, aircraft and armored vehicles to the February level. If the war drags on, much more. Moreover, technological sanctions can make the loss of modern equipment irreplaceable in principle. "All modern equipment at the plants is Western. Basically, American, European, something Japanese. What was purchased before 2014," says Luzin. Without the supply of Western spare parts and new equipment, production volumes will gradually decline, and weapons will become less modern and of high quality. </blockquote>
Sorry, but I now consider that source of Russian casualty figures to be hopeless compromised.
I suspect that their "estimate" of Russian casualties based on dispersal of Russian budget compensation funds is likely skewed badly. Since I don't know whether a mere division of reported Russian compensation per person actually translates mathematically in to the actual Russian budget dispersal, I have no way of confirming whether their "estimate" is reliable or not. Given their evident anti-Putin bias, I suspect it's entirely bogus.
If someone can determine a reliable way to translate the reported Russian budget dispersal for the first four months of the war into actual physically compensated Russian families, and prove that there are no extraneous financial factors involved, then maybe we could get a reliable estimate. Until then, this estimate is unreliable.
Which means your entire calculation of Russian irretrievable losses is unreliable.
Macgregor says an interesting thing about Ukraine casualties...
He says he watched a video yesterday of a Ukrainian brigade moving off-road into a position near a town outside Bahkmut.
The Russians fired one artillery shell into their midst to gauge the accuracy, then opened up with everything they had available.
The brigade was annihilated in minutes.
That's perhaps X percent - perhaps up to 80% - of 4000 troops (assuming the brigade was full-strength which it probably wasn't) annihilated in ONE engagement in ONE day!
Extrapolate that! Because that is what's happening all around Bakhmut, Avdeevka and other places.
This is why I think the current Ukrainian casualty rate is two or three times the 500-1,000/day it was seven months ago. The more bodies Zelensky throws into the front, the higher the kill ratio gets.
As I stated in MoA, here is a cross-post of my response to this article that I posted there:
Posted by: Aaron Lee | Mar 22 2023 22:26 utc | 107
Interesting analysis. One problem is that Russian casualties during the first half of 2022 were probably not consistent. There was probably an uptick in the first couple months of the war, then a downtick when they went on the attrition phase. Then an uptick during the Ukraine "offensives", then back down again, then an uptick again when Bakhmut started - but that's assuming that Wagner, an ostensibly "private" company, is included in the official Russian army figures.
OTOH, Russian figures probably do include the Donbass militias since they were incorporated into the Russian army. This detracts from the number of actual Russian regular army casualties however, to a probably unknown degree.
There is also the better Russian medical treatment which might indicate some percentage of wounded returning to duty, but I'm mostly ignoring that, on both sides, especially on the Ukraine side as Ukraine evacuation from the battlefield has been reported to be extremely poor.
I'd also put less weight on the 3:1 force multiplier for defenders, despite the heavy Ukrainian fortifications, as Russia has overwhelming artillery, missile and air power reputed to be anywhere from 7:1 to 10:1 superiority. This should reduce the defender advantage considerably versus historical wars.
I've long simply looked at the daily Russian MoD figures since the start of the war (although I don't bother now for months.) If you count up the reported KIA the Russians report, and then add in the assumption that at least one Ukrainian was killed or wounded at the number of "concentrations of manpower and materiel" also reported by the MoD reports, you get a minimum of 500-1,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded per day, every day since the start of the war. That adds up to 15,000-30,000 dead and wounded per month for the last 13 months: 195,000 - 390,000 total.
I also extrapolated Russian losses for the first month of March, 2022, as 1,300 based on official MoD reports. Extrapolating that for 13 months comes to 16,900 KIA, which is considerably less than that estimated by the Novaya gazeta Evropa, the Russian newspaper which SIPRI uses as the source for the 15-17,000 dead - which you will note on re-reading that section is an "estimate". In fact, it seems the 17,000 figure for the first four months of 2022 is closer to my estimate for the total Russian KIA since the war started.
Novaya gazeta Evropa, by the way, is an "independent" Russian newspaper, which was shut down by Russia in September, 2022:
Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last independent media, banned by court
<blockquote>Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last independent news outlets, was stripped of its media licence on Monday (5 September), and in effect banned from operating. On the same day, a Russian court sentenced ex-journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in a penal colony after finding him guilty of treason.
Russia’s media watchdog Rozkomnadzor had accused the publication of failing to provide documents related to a change of ownership in 2006.
Speaking outside court, editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov, a Nobel Peace laureate for his efforts to uphold critical news reporting in Russia, said the ruling was “a political hit job, without the slightest legal basis”. He said the paper would appeal.</blockquote>
So I inclined to believe that the estimated figure of 15-17,000 Russian KIA for a mere four months is probably incorrect, although obviously not impossible.
In fact, here is the original article cited by SiPRI for those figures (original in Russian):
Pay for my Iskanders
How Russia spends on war super profits received from the trade in oil and gas: a study by Novaya Gazeta. Europe»
Here is the English translation of the excerpt on Russian casualties:
<blockquote>In total, 113 billion rubles were allocated for compensation to the military. <B>According to rough estimates,</B> these payments can be accrued for the <B>death of 4-7 thousand people and the injury of 7-12 thousand. That is, the irretrievable losses of the army amount to at least 15-17 thousand fighters.</B> This is 10-11% of the initial grouping of troops transferred for the war in Ukraine.
These figures are close to the estimates of the army's losses, verified by journalists of "Important Stories" and "Mediazona". However, most likely, they are significantly lower than the real ones. The Russian Defense Ministry last reported 1,300 deaths in late March. But, for example, the British Ministry of Defense in May estimated Russian losses at 15,000 killed. According to the estimates of the Ukrainian side, 37.4 thousand were killed by all pro-Russian forces. </blockquote>
Note that the figure of 17,000 is NOT for "KIA" but for TOTAL Russian losses. The lower bound estimated by the paper is 11,000, extrapolated out to today would be 143,000.
Also, since the paper gives some credence to the British Ministry of Defense, which is a risible source of information, I'm inclined to doubt the paper's estimates as being reliable.
Further I believe that the Ukrainian practice of throwing untrained conscripts into the front has probably increased the number of casualties dramatically for the last six months or longer. The more untrained personnel you throw into a kill zone, the higher the kill ratio becomes.
So a figure of 400,000 is the most reasonable figure for Ukrainian losses, in my view, whereas Russian losses are probably below 100,000.
Excellent analysis. Information triangulation is how we can sift through the propaganda and figure out what's really happening.
Things that you wrote that stand out:
- Total Russian Casualties = Total Casualties - Donbass - Wagner - Mercs = 11k-17k KIA
- Inconsistent Casualty Rate: a method to investigate further would be to trawl through the data and manually calculate munition use & kill rate. Then we could correlate tempo to KIA. I find it hard to believe any casualty figures, but I trust accounting when accounting errors mess up the enterprise. That's why I found that SIPRI document compelling.
- What is the total # of Ukrainians killed if we rely on the Russian MOD?
- What is the conversion rate of artillery superiority to force multiplier? I'm assuming they teach this at OCS, but I wouldn't know. Defender gets the 3:1, but that gets modified by the arms/doctrine multiplier. Prigozhin has stated he's getting something like 24-27 times (I can't remember the source and don't want to look it up, since that would slow down conversation here) because they've been having something like 8:1 or 9:1 Ukrainian to Wagner casualties. I also read that Wagner is using more heavy weaponry and less inclined to take Ukrainians alive, so that could also explain his number.
- I saw that exact same 113 billion ruble figure quoted in the SIPRI paper. The big question is how much is being paid out of the General fund now? Or some other diverted fund? Maybe a drill sergeant is being paid under the 'Sport' budget subitem?
- It's quite possible that major Russian media sources are under the same types of information blackouts that afflict US media sources... like the fact that we're asking questions a multi-billion dollar media industry doesn't ask. In which case, Russian media sources could be sticking to the party line that it's 17k dead.
- If it's 400k dead Ukrainians, then using an 8.1818 force multiplier, then it's 48.888 dead Russians. If it's a 24 force multiplier, then it's 16,666 dead Russians. If it's a 27 force multiplier, it's 14,814 dead Ukrainians. Somewhere between 8-24 seems right. Unfortunately, I think your 400k figure is right, because it links up nicely with the other calculations. Yuk.
Here's a modification to my estimates which I posted a short while ago at MoA.
I should revise my estimate of Ukrainian casualties due to the increased tempo of Ukrainian casualties due to increased Russian pressure since the September Ukrainian "offensives" and the Bakhmut operation which heated up since then.
So if we assume 15-30,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded per month for the first six months of the war, March through August, that would be 90,000-180,000 up until September.
Then if we assume double the number of Ukrainian casualties per day since September, 2,000, which seems reasonable given the much increased Russian reported Ukrainian KIA since then, we have 30-60,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded per month, for seven months, or 210,000-420,000.
Adding the two periods together, we get: 300,000-600,000 total KIA and wounded.
That's assuming the loss rate isn't 3,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded per day. Back in the fall they talked about a battalion or two battalions lost every one or two days. It could be two battalions a day by now. Reports of 80% battalion losses and "four hour survival time" might indicate that level of losses.
This tends to agree with those analysts like Ritter and Macgregor who believe Ukraine ran through THREE ARMIES over the past year: 1) the one they started with, which was mostly destroyed by mid-summer, 2) the second one during late summer and through the fall that was used and mostly destroyed during their so-called "offensives", and 3) the one they have run since then which is now on its last legs and being pulled together for a "last hurrah" "offensive" to try to take Melitipol (or reinforce Bakhmut). Each army was probably about 200,000 effectives at any given point.
Can Ukraine pull together another 200,000 effectives? I doubt it. And even if they do, it will be destroyed as well, as it has been proven that NATO can not resupply either enough Ukrainian troops trained in the rear or the EU or materiel to replace Ukrainian losses at the present rate of loss.
Some may believe that Ukraine can continue to produce 200,000 troops indefinitely, but again, throwing untrained conscripts into the front merely increases the rate of loss, which is what happened since mid-summer/early fall. The more troops Ukraine throws in, the higher the loss rate.
The only people who have a firm grasp on what the loss rate is the Russian MoD, the Ukrainian MoD (probably if they're keeping accurate records as to the losses and the conscript replacement rate), and possibly the US DoD or US National Reconnaissance Office. Everyone else - including me - is blowing smoke out of our asses with estimates.
My estimate was within 1% or 200 men of the US figure. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65451487 So they probably used the same formula as me. I think that earns me the right to insist you like and share this article.
Or maybe not, since 17,000 is 85% of the 20,000 figure cited and 17k is every 5 months. At 3.4k/mo that is 13.6k Russians KIA. That means the US figure is 50% higher. I have no idea how I came up with the above number, but I might as well leave it up. I don't consider it a huge error. I think I was assuming 1/3 of all casualties estimated were Wagner, but that doesn't really justify the post.
Further comment I cross-posted to MoA...
Here's another example from that article of what that paper considers to be true:
<blockquote> The expert is sure that Russia cannot increase purchases of new equipment purely technically. It is produced very little. As a rule, the army simply removes Soviet equipment from storage and modernizes it. For example, T-80 tanks are upgraded to T-80BVM. "Even if three shifts are introduced at the plants, no one will provide them with materials, working hands, equipment, or components."
Given the loss of equipment at the moment, it will take Russia from three to ten years to restore the number of missiles, aircraft and armored vehicles to the February level. If the war drags on, much more. Moreover, technological sanctions can make the loss of modern equipment irreplaceable in principle. "All modern equipment at the plants is Western. Basically, American, European, something Japanese. What was purchased before 2014," says Luzin. Without the supply of Western spare parts and new equipment, production volumes will gradually decline, and weapons will become less modern and of high quality. </blockquote>
Sorry, but I now consider that source of Russian casualty figures to be hopeless compromised.
I suspect that their "estimate" of Russian casualties based on dispersal of Russian budget compensation funds is likely skewed badly. Since I don't know whether a mere division of reported Russian compensation per person actually translates mathematically in to the actual Russian budget dispersal, I have no way of confirming whether their "estimate" is reliable or not. Given their evident anti-Putin bias, I suspect it's entirely bogus.
If someone can determine a reliable way to translate the reported Russian budget dispersal for the first four months of the war into actual physically compensated Russian families, and prove that there are no extraneous financial factors involved, then maybe we could get a reliable estimate. Until then, this estimate is unreliable.
Which means your entire calculation of Russian irretrievable losses is unreliable.
You'll find this interesting.
I am just now listening to Colonel Douglas Macgregor on Judge Andrew Napolitano's "Judging Freedom" Youtube channel:
Putin & Xi have met - NOW WHAT in Ukraine? Col Doug Macgregor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2F0lrdyOhA
Macgregor says an interesting thing about Ukraine casualties...
He says he watched a video yesterday of a Ukrainian brigade moving off-road into a position near a town outside Bahkmut.
The Russians fired one artillery shell into their midst to gauge the accuracy, then opened up with everything they had available.
The brigade was annihilated in minutes.
That's perhaps X percent - perhaps up to 80% - of 4000 troops (assuming the brigade was full-strength which it probably wasn't) annihilated in ONE engagement in ONE day!
Extrapolate that! Because that is what's happening all around Bakhmut, Avdeevka and other places.
This is why I think the current Ukrainian casualty rate is two or three times the 500-1,000/day it was seven months ago. The more bodies Zelensky throws into the front, the higher the kill ratio gets.
As I stated in MoA, here is a cross-post of my response to this article that I posted there:
Posted by: Aaron Lee | Mar 22 2023 22:26 utc | 107
Interesting analysis. One problem is that Russian casualties during the first half of 2022 were probably not consistent. There was probably an uptick in the first couple months of the war, then a downtick when they went on the attrition phase. Then an uptick during the Ukraine "offensives", then back down again, then an uptick again when Bakhmut started - but that's assuming that Wagner, an ostensibly "private" company, is included in the official Russian army figures.
OTOH, Russian figures probably do include the Donbass militias since they were incorporated into the Russian army. This detracts from the number of actual Russian regular army casualties however, to a probably unknown degree.
There is also the better Russian medical treatment which might indicate some percentage of wounded returning to duty, but I'm mostly ignoring that, on both sides, especially on the Ukraine side as Ukraine evacuation from the battlefield has been reported to be extremely poor.
I'd also put less weight on the 3:1 force multiplier for defenders, despite the heavy Ukrainian fortifications, as Russia has overwhelming artillery, missile and air power reputed to be anywhere from 7:1 to 10:1 superiority. This should reduce the defender advantage considerably versus historical wars.
I've long simply looked at the daily Russian MoD figures since the start of the war (although I don't bother now for months.) If you count up the reported KIA the Russians report, and then add in the assumption that at least one Ukrainian was killed or wounded at the number of "concentrations of manpower and materiel" also reported by the MoD reports, you get a minimum of 500-1,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded per day, every day since the start of the war. That adds up to 15,000-30,000 dead and wounded per month for the last 13 months: 195,000 - 390,000 total.
I also extrapolated Russian losses for the first month of March, 2022, as 1,300 based on official MoD reports. Extrapolating that for 13 months comes to 16,900 KIA, which is considerably less than that estimated by the Novaya gazeta Evropa, the Russian newspaper which SIPRI uses as the source for the 15-17,000 dead - which you will note on re-reading that section is an "estimate". In fact, it seems the 17,000 figure for the first four months of 2022 is closer to my estimate for the total Russian KIA since the war started.
Novaya gazeta Evropa, by the way, is an "independent" Russian newspaper, which was shut down by Russia in September, 2022:
Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last independent media, banned by court
https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/novaya-gazeta-one-of-russias-last-independent-media-banned-by-court/
<blockquote>Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last independent news outlets, was stripped of its media licence on Monday (5 September), and in effect banned from operating. On the same day, a Russian court sentenced ex-journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in a penal colony after finding him guilty of treason.
Russia’s media watchdog Rozkomnadzor had accused the publication of failing to provide documents related to a change of ownership in 2006.
Speaking outside court, editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov, a Nobel Peace laureate for his efforts to uphold critical news reporting in Russia, said the ruling was “a political hit job, without the slightest legal basis”. He said the paper would appeal.</blockquote>
So I inclined to believe that the estimated figure of 15-17,000 Russian KIA for a mere four months is probably incorrect, although obviously not impossible.
In fact, here is the original article cited by SiPRI for those figures (original in Russian):
Pay for my Iskanders
How Russia spends on war super profits received from the trade in oil and gas: a study by Novaya Gazeta. Europe»
https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2022/07/11/oplatite-moi-iskandery
Here is the English translation of the excerpt on Russian casualties:
<blockquote>In total, 113 billion rubles were allocated for compensation to the military. <B>According to rough estimates,</B> these payments can be accrued for the <B>death of 4-7 thousand people and the injury of 7-12 thousand. That is, the irretrievable losses of the army amount to at least 15-17 thousand fighters.</B> This is 10-11% of the initial grouping of troops transferred for the war in Ukraine.
These figures are close to the estimates of the army's losses, verified by journalists of "Important Stories" and "Mediazona". However, most likely, they are significantly lower than the real ones. The Russian Defense Ministry last reported 1,300 deaths in late March. But, for example, the British Ministry of Defense in May estimated Russian losses at 15,000 killed. According to the estimates of the Ukrainian side, 37.4 thousand were killed by all pro-Russian forces. </blockquote>
Note that the figure of 17,000 is NOT for "KIA" but for TOTAL Russian losses. The lower bound estimated by the paper is 11,000, extrapolated out to today would be 143,000.
Also, since the paper gives some credence to the British Ministry of Defense, which is a risible source of information, I'm inclined to doubt the paper's estimates as being reliable.
Further I believe that the Ukrainian practice of throwing untrained conscripts into the front has probably increased the number of casualties dramatically for the last six months or longer. The more untrained personnel you throw into a kill zone, the higher the kill ratio becomes.
So a figure of 400,000 is the most reasonable figure for Ukrainian losses, in my view, whereas Russian losses are probably below 100,000.
Excellent analysis. Information triangulation is how we can sift through the propaganda and figure out what's really happening.
Things that you wrote that stand out:
- Total Russian Casualties = Total Casualties - Donbass - Wagner - Mercs = 11k-17k KIA
- Inconsistent Casualty Rate: a method to investigate further would be to trawl through the data and manually calculate munition use & kill rate. Then we could correlate tempo to KIA. I find it hard to believe any casualty figures, but I trust accounting when accounting errors mess up the enterprise. That's why I found that SIPRI document compelling.
- What is the total # of Ukrainians killed if we rely on the Russian MOD?
- What is the conversion rate of artillery superiority to force multiplier? I'm assuming they teach this at OCS, but I wouldn't know. Defender gets the 3:1, but that gets modified by the arms/doctrine multiplier. Prigozhin has stated he's getting something like 24-27 times (I can't remember the source and don't want to look it up, since that would slow down conversation here) because they've been having something like 8:1 or 9:1 Ukrainian to Wagner casualties. I also read that Wagner is using more heavy weaponry and less inclined to take Ukrainians alive, so that could also explain his number.
- I saw that exact same 113 billion ruble figure quoted in the SIPRI paper. The big question is how much is being paid out of the General fund now? Or some other diverted fund? Maybe a drill sergeant is being paid under the 'Sport' budget subitem?
- It's quite possible that major Russian media sources are under the same types of information blackouts that afflict US media sources... like the fact that we're asking questions a multi-billion dollar media industry doesn't ask. In which case, Russian media sources could be sticking to the party line that it's 17k dead.
- If it's 400k dead Ukrainians, then using an 8.1818 force multiplier, then it's 48.888 dead Russians. If it's a 24 force multiplier, then it's 16,666 dead Russians. If it's a 27 force multiplier, it's 14,814 dead Ukrainians. Somewhere between 8-24 seems right. Unfortunately, I think your 400k figure is right, because it links up nicely with the other calculations. Yuk.
Here's a modification to my estimates which I posted a short while ago at MoA.
I should revise my estimate of Ukrainian casualties due to the increased tempo of Ukrainian casualties due to increased Russian pressure since the September Ukrainian "offensives" and the Bakhmut operation which heated up since then.
So if we assume 15-30,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded per month for the first six months of the war, March through August, that would be 90,000-180,000 up until September.
Then if we assume double the number of Ukrainian casualties per day since September, 2,000, which seems reasonable given the much increased Russian reported Ukrainian KIA since then, we have 30-60,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded per month, for seven months, or 210,000-420,000.
Adding the two periods together, we get: 300,000-600,000 total KIA and wounded.
That's assuming the loss rate isn't 3,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded per day. Back in the fall they talked about a battalion or two battalions lost every one or two days. It could be two battalions a day by now. Reports of 80% battalion losses and "four hour survival time" might indicate that level of losses.
This tends to agree with those analysts like Ritter and Macgregor who believe Ukraine ran through THREE ARMIES over the past year: 1) the one they started with, which was mostly destroyed by mid-summer, 2) the second one during late summer and through the fall that was used and mostly destroyed during their so-called "offensives", and 3) the one they have run since then which is now on its last legs and being pulled together for a "last hurrah" "offensive" to try to take Melitipol (or reinforce Bakhmut). Each army was probably about 200,000 effectives at any given point.
Can Ukraine pull together another 200,000 effectives? I doubt it. And even if they do, it will be destroyed as well, as it has been proven that NATO can not resupply either enough Ukrainian troops trained in the rear or the EU or materiel to replace Ukrainian losses at the present rate of loss.
Some may believe that Ukraine can continue to produce 200,000 troops indefinitely, but again, throwing untrained conscripts into the front merely increases the rate of loss, which is what happened since mid-summer/early fall. The more troops Ukraine throws in, the higher the loss rate.
The only people who have a firm grasp on what the loss rate is the Russian MoD, the Ukrainian MoD (probably if they're keeping accurate records as to the losses and the conscript replacement rate), and possibly the US DoD or US National Reconnaissance Office. Everyone else - including me - is blowing smoke out of our asses with estimates.
My estimate was within 1% or 200 men of the US figure. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65451487 So they probably used the same formula as me. I think that earns me the right to insist you like and share this article.
Or maybe not, since 17,000 is 85% of the 20,000 figure cited and 17k is every 5 months. At 3.4k/mo that is 13.6k Russians KIA. That means the US figure is 50% higher. I have no idea how I came up with the above number, but I might as well leave it up. I don't consider it a huge error. I think I was assuming 1/3 of all casualties estimated were Wagner, but that doesn't really justify the post.