The Ukrainian President has provided a glimpse into the scale of casualties suffered by Ukrainian forces in Donbass, saying between 50 and 100 Ukrainians could die every day.
While Ukraine and its allies have accounted for a large chunk of Russian casualties since the war began, the issue of Ukrainian casualties has been something of a black hole.
The heaviest fighting is concentrated in the twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysyhansk in Luhansk, one of the two provinces of Donbass.
Watching a salvo of Russian rocket artillery being dumped on Lyman from about 10km away. We could see the explosions of shells hitting Ukrainian positions. pic.twitter.com/tKwhGR5y1T
— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) May 23, 2022
“Today, 50 to 100 people could be killed here in the most complicated area, in the east of our country,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday evening.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, said in a local TV interview that Russia was using “scorched earth” tactics in the region and that Severodonetsk had been attacked from “four different directions,” although Russian forces had failed to get into the area region invade city.
Donbass has been the scene of fierce fighting lately, with both sides bringing intense shelling, with Zelenskyy’s remarks appearing to indicate casualties in the battle. The high recent death toll on the Ukrainian side also points to an even larger number of non-fatal casualties.
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In the past, a ratio of one killed to three wounded was considered a rough rule of thumb for casualty ratings, although better medical treatment and evacuation on the ground, not least for US forces in theaters of war such as Afghanistan and Iraq, has resulted in far better survival rates Rate of injuries that would previously have caused fatalities.
A policy paper released by the Belfer Center in 2014 states: “The combat wounded-to-death ratio has increased dramatically as a result of improvements in medical care in conflict zones. This shift is particularly relevant for technologically advanced countries like the United States, which invest significant resources in military medicine.”
The new estimate came as Kyiv also revealed its worst military losses from a single attack in the Ukraine war on Monday, saying 87 people were killed last week when Russian forces attacked a barracks housing troops at a training base in the north .
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The revelation that scores of people had been killed in the attack demonstrated Russia’s ability to inflict heavy losses even far from the front lines. Earlier, Kyiv said eight people died in the May 17 strike at the barracks in the city of Desna.
“Today we completed the work at Desna. In Desna, under the rubble, there were 87 victims. Eighty-seven bodies,” Zelenskiy said during a video-linked speech to business leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
At the time, Moscow said it had hit a training base with long-range missiles. The death toll Zelenskyi announced on Monday was more than double the death toll in a similar attack on a Ukrainian training base in Yaraviv in the west in March.
The updated Desna death toll came after recent statements by senior Ukrainian officials, including the President, warning of increasing bloodshed in the next phase of the conflict amid expectations of a Ukrainian counter-offensive later in the summer.
Zelenskyy’s admission of the increasingly heavy toll on Ukraine’s military follows claims by the British Ministry of Defense that since Russia invaded Ukraine it has likely suffered a similar death toll to that of the Soviet Union during its nine-year war in Afghanistan, despite claims could not be independently verified.
Like Ukraine, Western allies, including Britain, have tended to emphasize Russian casualties while avoiding the issue of Ukrainian casualties as part of the information war with Moscow aimed in part at shifting Russian public opinion against Putin’s invasion.
A combination of “poor, low-level tactics, limited air cover, lack of flexibility” and a command approach that is “willing to magnify mistakes and repeat mistakes” has led to Russia’s high casualty rate, British intelligence said in its latest report released on Monday morning.
Losses in the Donbass offensive continue to mount, the report added. “The Russian public has a history of being sensitive to casualties suffered in post-election wars. As the number of casualties suffered in Ukraine continues to mount, they will become more apparent and public dissatisfaction with, and willingness to speak out about, the war may increase.”