In a ‘meat grinder’ of a war, Russian and Ukrainian casualties rise

In Ukraine, it’s far from quiet on the eastern front. By the end of the weekend, Ukrainian forces had withdrawn from three villages in the eastern Donetsk region, a tactical retreat that betrays Kyiv’s deeper vulnerabilities. Short of ammunition and fresh troops more than two years into its dogged resistance of Russian invasion, Ukraine finds itself on the back foot as the Kremlin attempts to renew its offensive momentum. Russian forces seized the eastern city of Avdiivka in February and have made further inroads since that success.

“In an attempt to seize the strategic initiative and break through the front line, the enemy has focused its main efforts on several areas, creating a significant advantage in forces and means,” Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top commander, said Sunday, describing a situation that had “worsened.”

Along various sections of the front line, Ukrainian authorities are weighing whether to sacrifice men or territory. The urgently needed military aid unlocked by the U.S. Congress’s long-stalled spending bill is yet to arrive or turn the tide of battle. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Kyiv is “still waiting for the supplies promised to Ukraine,” and added that without those arms, Ukraine would not be able to effectively “change the situation on the battlefield.”

Zelenskyy called on his country’s Western backers to show more political support, accelerating the process to fold Ukraine into both the European Union and NATO. “The alliance should not be afraid of its own strength or shy away from its own foundations – every country that shares common values and is willing to actually defend them deserves an invitation to join,” Zelenskyy said.

That’s a debate that will roil Western capitals in the months to come. On the ground, the picture is darker, with casualties soaring on both sides of the conflict. In crucial battles, Russia has flung waves of often poorly trained troops at Ukraine’s defense, sustaining mass casualties in a bid to erode Ukrainian positions and deplete their stockpiles. The “meat grinder” tactic has underpinned the Russian victories at Avdiivka and at Bakhmut last year, but at hideous cost.

There are no reliable exact numbers for military casualties in this war, though Ukraine believes Russian casualties this year are on pace to exceed the Russian toll from last year, should Kyiv’s troops receive the reinforcements they need. The BBC has tried to use independent sources and even aerial images of cemeteries in Russia to count Russia’s war dead. Its latest estimate placed the Russian death toll past the 50,000 mark, though it acknowledged the real figure is likely much higher.

Zelenskyy recently claimed that Russia had suffered some half a million war casualties, including 180,000 soldiers killed in action. It’s impossible to verify this figure. The Kremlin and its state propaganda channels have worked fitfully to obscure the scale of the calamity.

Leo Docherty, Britain’s minister of state for the Armed Forces, said at the end of the last week that his government estimates “that approximately 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded, and tens of thousands more have already deserted since the start of the conflict.”

Docherty added that the Kremlin has lost “over 10,000 Russian armored vehicles, including nearly 3,000 main battle tanks, 109 fixed wing aircraft, 136 helicopters, 346 unmanned aerial vehicles, 23 naval vessels of all classes, and over 1,500 artillery systems of all types have been destroyed, abandoned, or captured by Ukraine since the start of the conflict.”

Nevertheless, Russia has seemed able to absorb these stunning losses, while turning the screw on Ukraine’s defenders in the east. Western intelligence officials dispute Zelenskyy’s estimate for Ukraine’s casualties – some 31,000 soldiers killed in the fighting – and believe the figure is far higher, likely more than double. Ukraine is far smaller than Russia and can’t compete with the Kremlin’s ability to mobilize fresh recruits.

Ukrainian legislators loosened laws around conscription earlier this month, lowering the draft eligible age from 27 to 25. Zelenskyy has also urged European governments to encourage military-age Ukrainian male refugees to return to their homeland. As my colleagues Missy Ryan and Siobhán O’Grady reported, some think that Zelenskyy is possibly suppressing the real Ukrainian death toll to keep public morale up.

“A Ukrainian lawmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid said they believed Zelenskyy’s announcement in February that 31,000 soldiers had been killed since 2022 vastly downplayed the war’s true toll,” they reported, pointing to difficulties in mobilizing fresh troops that range from concerns over the open-ended nature of combat tours to frustrations over low pay and Kyiv’s ability to help the families of those slain.

“We see so many deaths and so many wounded,” the lawmaker told my colleagues. “If they go, (troops) want to know how long they will be there.”

The troubles over replenishing Ukraine’s beleaguered forces are as important as the need to give them superior arms. “The manpower situation is the growing problem,” Rob Lee, a former U.S. Marine now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told The Washington Post. “And if that’s not fixed, then this aid package is not going to solve all Ukraine’s issues.”

U.S. policymakers have conservative expectations for how the war will unfold in 2024, hoping that Ukraine can simply hold the line, bolster its defenses and prepare for another counteroffensive further down the road.

“I don’t think Ukraine is in a position where they are likely to regain significant territory in the next few months,” a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. assessments of the war, told my colleagues last week.