BBC Russia, working with Mediazona, have since early in this conflict kept a count by name of the number people reported killed from multiple sources in Russia. Don’t know how accurate the list is, but I gather everyone they list did die in Ukraine. It may not have been a combat loss. They are also probably some who died in Ukraine who are not listed. Whether the number not listed is a significant additional amount is not known. Nor is it known if there are more people have died who are not listed then those who are listed. Not sure how I would estimate that.Â
Still, it is the only listing of Russian dead over time other than the weekly DPR reports (which I may blog about later).Â
Anyhow, there is a chart in this link of the people killed over time: Russia’s losses in the war with Ukraine. Summary of “Mediazona”
I have not figured out how to capture it and publish it directly to this blog, but the chart I am looking at is halfway down the page called “Losses of the Russian army in the weeks of the war.” It does give casualties for each week, but only counts a total of 13,019 deaths (out of 18,024 deaths as of 24 March). This is because in a large number of cases, the exact date of death is not known.
The first week of the war is 514 deaths. The second week is 574, the third week is 437. It then drops noticeably in the fourth week to 248, then up to 333, then down to 183. This brings us into early April (up to 6 April), when Russian had withdrawn from most of northern and northeastern Ukraine. It is a total of 2,289 deaths in the first six weeks of the war. Actual losses were probably higher.
On 2 March, Russia published a casualty report saying their losses were 498 troops killed and 1,587 wounded since 24 February. As can been seen from the Mediazona report, there were at least 514 deaths in the first week of the war.Â
On 25 March Russia reported 1,351 killed and 3,825 wounded. BBC/Mediazona reported less at the time, with 557 confirmed deaths as of 21 March. From the current Mediazona chart, it appears the killed are 514 + 574 + 437 + 248 = 1,773.
The only other Russian report of losses was on 21 September, when they reported 5,937 killed. At that time BBC/Mediazona were reporting 6,476 killed as of 15 September from their counting efforts. Counting from this chart shows up through 21 September: 1,773 + 333 + 183 + 143 + 197 + 287 + 226 + 275 + 184 + 313 + 244 + 178 + 157 + 175 + 206 + 200 + 193 + 167 + 114 + 85 + 128 + 166 + 118 + 179 + 284 + 197 + 197 = 6,902.
Not sure what conclusions I should draw from this.
As can be seen by this chart, Russian losses were fairly high in September and October, running between 197 and 314 a week, and were again fairly high in December 2022 through early February 2023, running from 227 to 220 a week. They have since declined.Â
Also see: Casualty Estimates for the Russo-Ukrainian War | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)
This information is commonly seized by the pro-RU side as proof of limited RU casualties, while the reality is that these are only the proven names of the dead, and casualties are likely much higher (as it says in the article).
I wonder if we will ever know the actual casualty # ?
Of course we will find out the actual number of victims. We finally learned the combat losses of the Red Army in the war of 1941-1945 in 1993 in the book of Krivosheev) we just have to wait. maybe not 50 years, but much earlier.
By the way, the Mediazone constantly repeats that the number of real victims is at least 2 times greater than a count by name of the number people reported killed from multiple sources in Russia.
I had not seen where they actually say that. Is there a quote where that claim is made and can I get the reference for that?
It is kind of my sense that real count might be double, but that is not based upon anything other than “feel.”
Ihttps://twitter.com/oivshina/status/1646901036009807873
Sorry, https://twitter.com/oivshina/status/1646901036009807873
Thanks. I had not seen that. For my own estimations, I have been inflating the Mediazona counts by 50%, even though I acknowledge it could well be double. Having a Mediazona person now saying there are probably 50% more that are not counted is interesting. This is assuming I have correctly interpreted her remarks to mean that she believes the real count is 1.5 times what they have counted, vice the real count being 2.0 times what they have counted.
“We think that our list contains 50% fewer names than the actual number of soldiers that have been buried in Russia”
Yeah that’s a confusing statement 🙂
I guess I could text her and ask her what she means.
Let’s say
“actual number of soldiers that have been buried in Russia”=100
“50% fewer names”=50
It does appear that she meant that the real number is x2, but a clarification would be nice.
Dr. Olga Ivshina (BBC) @oivshina replied on 4/25/23 to my query on twitter: “2 times. So if we have 20,000 names we think the real toll may be around 40,000 KIA.”
Thank you.
Did you see on twitter my latest “long question” to Dr. Olga Ivshina?
Sorry, just saw this comment. I see that you made several twitts, gonna read them now.
Hernan: Yes, they have not responded yet, and not sure they will. They probably don’t have a clear answer. But, by counting all dead in the military at the time of the war, you are certainly going to count more than just the combat casualties. Probably won’t be able to sort out the “DNBI” from the combat casualties. So their count is an undercount but also a little bit of an overcount.
Let’s hope that at least they learned something from your tweets.
Perhaps one could come up with some sort of rule of thumb to calculate those DNBI casualties? I’m guessing that they are not easily extrapolated from examples of different countries…