Ukraine War: Four Weeks On, Pt. 1

But Russia has sent a force of only 190,000 to fight in Ukraine, which means Russia would have only four soldiers for every 1,000 Ukrainians, not the 20-per-1,000 required in a Northern Ireland-like disorderly scenario.

Justin Crump, chief executive of intelligence consulting firm Sibylline, told The Times that “success in Syria and Crimea — coupled with a lack of resolve shown in Afghanistan last year — may have played a part in convincing Russia of a swift victory.”

Attrition
We cannot tell exactly how many Russian soldiers were killed in the first month of the war, and the figures being used by both Ukraine and Russia are unreliable. The Pentagon estimates that between 7,500 and 8,000 Russian soldiers have been killed so far. Ukraine said more than 15,000 Russian soldiers were killed, while the Russian official military spokesman says fewer than 600 were killed.

Intriguingly, the Russian newspaper Kosmsomolskaya Pravda, which is close to the government, published the figures of 9,861 dead and 16,153 injured – but within hours these figures disappeared from the newspaper’s website.

If we take the Pentagon’s figure — 8,000 Russian soldiers killed – and apply the rule of thumb that for every soldier killed, four soldiers are taken off the battlefield (three soldiers injured and one soldier is captured, has deserted, or has surrendered), we see that about 36,000 Russian soldiers, out of 190,000, were taken off the battlefield.

This is nearly 20 percent of the Russian forces in Ukraine. If the second months of fighting sees a similar rate of attrition, this means that at the end of April, about 40 percent of Russia’s invasion force will have been taken off the battlefield.

“In military logic, when a force has lost a third, it is combat ineffective,” Clarke told The Times. “That’s a rule of thumb that’s held for most of the past 200 years.”

In addition to the soldiers killed, seven Russian generals were killed as well.

This is an astonishingly high rate of attrition. The Times notes that, by contrast, 2,324 U.S. soldiers were killed in the 20-year war in Afghanistan — about 0.3 deaths per day.

Another 4,598 U.S. soldiers were killed in the 7-year Iraq war, the equivalent of 1.8 per day, while 58,220 died in the 20-year Vietnam War, an average of eight soldiers killed per day (note that around 30 troops a day died during the main years of fighting between 1966 and 1970).

He number of Russian soldiers killed in the first month of the invasion is an order of magnitude greater: The invasion has so far resulted in between 350 and 500 deaths a day, making it one of the costliest invasions (to the invader) of modern times. This is even higher than the rate at which British forces died in the Second World War, when 384,000 were killed over six years, which is about 185 a day. This figure is dwarfed by Russian losses during Second World War: 8.6 million over four years, which is more than 6,000 a day.

The Russian high level of attrition in Ukraine means that entire units can no longer function – especially those units designated for offensive operations requiring maneuver, mobility, and speed.

We should note, though, that even if Russia can no longer engage in maneuver warfare at scale with a reasonable hope of success, it can still inflict enormous damage, especially on the civilian population and infrastructure, by continuing, or escalating, its use of artillery, rockets, missiles, and aerial bombardment.  

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire