r/InternationalNews • u/Snowfish52 • 19d ago
Ukraine/Russia Ukraine has lost 43,000 soldiers in action since start of invasion, Zelensky says
https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-43-000-soldiers-lost-since-the-beginning-of-the-war/28
u/DependentFeature3028 19d ago
I just looked at OP profile and I can resume it in one word: propaganda
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u/PaulDecember 19d ago
Doesn't make it incorrect.
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u/cantstopsletting 19d ago
My brother, I was in Ukraine for several months of the first year of war, the numbers are far higher than 43k.
I still have friends over there. 43k is such a low number it's not even close to the realm of reality.
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u/lelouch312 19d ago
May I ask, what do you think would be a more accurate figure? Just curious here.
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u/Flat_Veterinarian654 19d ago
Forgot to add a zero, if not two.
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u/ZaercoN 19d ago
You think it's plausible that Ukraine has lost 4300000 soldiers? I don't think they would be in this war anymore
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u/SakurabaFan30 19d ago
You do know that in the battle of Somme, the British had 420k casualties and the French had 205k casualties, right? That was a 120 day battle. 400k+ casualties for a modern war (that has taken the shape of WW1 in terms of battle tactics) in a 2 year time span is not at all unthinkable. They are losing that much. The US wouldn’t have allowed the use of ballistic missiles within Russia if they weren’t losing that hard.
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u/ZaercoN 19d ago edited 19d ago
I'm not debating 400k casualties. I'm debating the plausibility of 4.3 million dead
I don't think 43k is right but 4.3 million feels wholly uncorroborated. And then when I pressed the original commenter they just said "some people told me stuff".
Other estimations put Ukraine at losses around 100k. I don't know what to believe right now either, and I don't really buy any politicians numbers but wouldn't Russian media or state officials be touting Ukrainian losses if it were in the millions like that? Maybe they are and I haven't seen it but it sounds like no one is giving out accurate numbers about this war.
Also zelenesky even corroborated 400k casualties. Which are not the same as deaths. Now I'm sure that is under the real number.
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u/SakurabaFan30 19d ago
If the Russians are losing 1.5k troops to either injury or death a day, then doubling or tripling that estimate for the Ukrainians is not a stretch. They may not have 4.3m casualties, they may have only 1-2, regardless, it is a massive crime against humanity to allow this war to continue. Russia will win in the end, anyone thinking otherwise is delusional to the max. Ukraine will give up the land Russia wants and all those men who have died every single day for this stupid war will have lost their lives in vain.
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u/NovaKaizr 19d ago
If the Russians are losing 1.5k troops to either injury or death a day, then doubling or tripling that estimate for the Ukrainians is not a stretch
What basis do you have for saying Ukraine is losing 2 or 3 times as many as Russia? That just seems like you pulled it out of your ass
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u/SakurabaFan30 18d ago
Because they’re losing the war. Are you one of those delusional people that actually thinks Ukraine will succeed?
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u/NovaKaizr 18d ago
That doesn't mean higher casualties. The attacking side is usually the one with higher casualty numbers, because they are the ones leaving defensible positions to assault dug in defenders. That is Russia. Russia is the one pushing the front lines.
Also, that is in a regular war, and doesn't account for Russia's documented, on camera, human wave tactics. That shouldn't really be a surprise, it is a long standing Russian tactic. It is the same one they used in WW2, relying on overwhelming manpower over advanced tactics. They are capturing territory, but at the cost of huge numbers of casualties.
Now as for Ukraine losing, yes and no. They are losing in the sense they are being slowly pushed back, but in terms of an imminent collapse, no. It is quite likely that Russia has suffered significantly more casualties than Ukraine, the reason Ukraine is still outnumbered is because Russia had a lot more recruits in the first place, and mind you even Russia has had to resort to massive enlistment bonuses, conscription, recruiting prisoners, pulling back mercenaries from the rest of the world, enlisting african mercenaries, and even employing north koreans.
There are 4 ways this conflict can end. The first is a negotiated peace, where Ukraine likely has to surrender all occupied territory. That would probably be considered a Ukrainian loss, but maybe they could get some western security guarantee out of it. The second option is Russia pushing Ukraine to the point of a complete Ukrainian collapse and being able to dictate terms. Obviously a Ukrainian loss. Option 3 is that Russia reaches a point where they are no longer able to support forward movement, so they instead decide the dig in and a stalemate ensues. That would likely also be a Ukrainian loss since they wouldn't be able to take back territory from entrenched Russian forces. Their success in Kursk was largely because they launched a surprise attack on unprepared defenders. The final option is Russia overextends itself and becomes unable to maintain the state. One advantage Ukraine has is the western backing holding up their society, meaning even with a lot of the population fighting and dying on the front lines they can stop society collapsing because the west is helping fill some of the gaps. Russia, in contrast, is subject to heavy sanctions, and the heavy manpower requirement on the front line will be felt a lot more in labor shortages. Russia is spending a third of its budget on the military. That has managed to keep the war effort going a long time, and probably will keep it going for the foreseeable future, but it is not sustainable indefinitely. There will come a time when the Russian economy crubles under the costs of the war, the question is just if they can end it before that happens. Logically speaking Putin could just end the war immediately if he sees an appoaching breaking point, either by option 1 or 3, but history has plenty of examples of leaders who were doomed by their own ambition.
So there you have it. 4 possible ends where 3 of them result in a Ukrainian loss. I personally hope for option 4. It is probably the least likely, but then again, nobody expected the entire Syrian government to fall in a week, so anything could happen.
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u/SakurabaFan30 18d ago
I didn’t read all that but glad you got it out king.
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u/NovaKaizr 18d ago
Oh shit sorry I forgot, this sub is for getting mad at the west, not actual analysis of geopolitics. My bad
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u/ZaercoN 19d ago
I can't tell if you're advocating for Russia to get what it wants or not. You say it's not a stretch, why? Can you give me some reasons for this? I'm not doubting a Russian victory but it seems arbitrary at the moment to assume Ukraine is losing two to three times as many soldiers.
Also I edited my comment with more, just wanted to make sure you saw that and that I'm not trying to pull a gotcha on you.
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u/magicsonar 19d ago edited 19d ago
No one knows how many Ukrainians have been killed. What we do know is that Russia had a massive advantage in artillery and ammunition for the first couple of years, estimates are it was 8:1. That gap has closed but now Russia had an advantage in things like glide bombs. Plus they have controlled the air.
So given the Russian artillery advantage, it's not unreasonable to expect that Ukrainian casualties could actually be higher than the Russian toll.. But we'll probably never really find out the truth.
But it's safe to say that Ukrainians casualties have been devastating. They are struggling to get more people to the front line now. They have a huge manpower problem. But if you look at the pre-war demographics (41 million people), taking into account the 7 million or so that left the country, Ukraine should have had a pool of 10-11 million men to mobilize. The idea that there have been around 400,000 casualties and that's been enough to put them on the ropes seems questionable. I strongly suspect their casualties have been massively higher.
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u/ZaercoN 19d ago
Fair enough, another commenter mentioned 800k and I've seen 1m numbers as well, I think 4.3m would put Ukraine out of this war but in the early years of the conflict I was mostly inundated with very pro Ukrainian news. While I don't believe that Ukraine's losses are so hilariously low I also have a gut feeling that Russia is still suffering a similar loss given how long this has gone on. This doesn't matter as much though because of the amount of bodies they can toss at the problem is way bigger
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u/SakurabaFan30 19d ago
Russia wants natural resources. The oblasts they want are already primarily Russian. This is a war of national survival for them. They are the first country to use a fucking ICBM in combat. Yeah if them getting what they want and it ends this stupid conflict killing thousands upon thousands of young men from both countries, I’m all for it.
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u/Flat_Veterinarian654 19d ago
I know people who came from Ukraine. Zelenskyy was kidnapping teenagers off the street only to send them to the front. Zelenskyy doesn’t care about Ukraine and he is using the war to get rich.
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u/ZaercoN 19d ago
So your only source is some people you know? Do you have other sources that you might have seen? I've not heard this particular account.
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u/Aggressive_Rent_4344 19d ago
Anecdotes from Ukrainians and inconsistencies published by Ukraine are the only possible truth we get.
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u/ZaercoN 19d ago
I was curious so I looked into other potential estimations of the death toll in Ukraine and I was seeing 100k at the highest which seems more realistic than 43k. While anecdotes from Ukrainians should be taken somewhat seriously, some guy on the Internet saying they know people is far away from an anecdote.
I'm not even against 430k being a reasonable estimate. But 4.3 million is kind of insane to just mention offhandedly
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u/Aggressive_Rent_4344 19d ago
Nobody knows the actual number.
The Russian number for Ukrainian casualties comes from a combination of visually confirmed, radio intercepts, and leaks from the Ukrainian military.
Are they right? No idea. I doubt it. I know they publicly state it's a conservative estimate but that doesn't mean much.
Ukraine just flat out lies. They claimed for 6 months into their first offensive in the fall of 2022 that they only had 10k KIA.
They couldn't drop almost any air dropped bombs. Even back then there was concensus that Russia had anywhere from x3 to x15 of the artillery of Ukraine depending on the area. Keep in mind that throughout the entire war, artillery had caused the most casualties followed by mines.
There isn't a single picture or video in almost 3 years of Russians using Human Wave tactics. There are more cameras for every sqkm of the front in Ukraine than at your local Best Buy. Maybe not since the main fortified lines fell for Ukraine but in 2022 and all of 2023 most certainly.
The most accurate casualtie figures are actually for Russia from MediaZona. It's 82, 050 KIA. The 120k number on their site is meaningless as they refuse to post their methodology. But they did explain how they gathered the main number. They even located tiny Wagner cemeteries for prisoners in the middle of nowhere.
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u/ZaercoN 19d ago
I'm right there with you in Ukraine lying. They certainly have a vested interest in keeping up morale and image to the rest of the world.
All I did was push back on someone mentioning that 4.3 million number offhandedly is kind of a wild take when you have no real evidence. If Russia has 82k deaths then I doubt Ukraine is taking such heavy losses, I would assume Ukraine would have given up by now. But I'm not an expert.
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u/Aggressive_Rent_4344 19d ago
I heard from somewhere that it's over 800k. That's deliberatly not the actual number. They didn't want to say cause it can be traced back to them. They also refused to clarify if that KIA or KIA plus irecoverble losses.
Make of that vague statement what you will.
I don't put a ton of weight on it, but we won't ever know. Not in 100 years.
I know Ukraine killed civilians around Izium and dumped them in a mass grave. There is a video of it on TG that Ukraine PR tried to frame the Russians for immediately when it came out by changing the color of the man's arm band to red but when you go frame by frame the red arm band floats and you can see the real one beneath it.
Plus, we know from Ukrainians complaining that KIA are not reported as KIA but missing.
You also cannot go by Russian estimates during combat. They typically massively overstate the number of Ukrainians they face by anywhere from x2 to x10. The more realistic number is announced like a week later.
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u/ZaercoN 19d ago
Thanks for your responses. Do you have a link to that video and other sources of that? Would like to be more knowledgeable and informed about this conflict
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u/Inevitable-Dream-272 18d ago edited 18d ago
If it was that low they wouldn't be so desperate for recruits and drafting people off the streets.
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