On day 238 of the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin declared martial law across Russia in an attempt to salvage something out of a war gone incredibly bad.
A Russian tank under attack by a drone from Ukraine. Image Credit: YouTube/Ukrainian military.
Martial Law in Parts of Ukraine
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared martial law across his country in response to the dire military situation in Ukraine.
There are four levels of readiness imposed by martial law (maximum, medium, elevated, and basic), and the closer a Russian province is to the front, the more serious level of readiness it now has.
For example, the Russian provinces that border Ukraine have been issued a “medium” level of readiness, while the four illegally annexed Ukrainian provinces (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson) have been issued a “maximum” level of readiness. Russian provinces far from the front have been issued a “basic” level of readiness.
But according to the Institute for the Study of War, the declaration of martial law across Russia is “largely legal theater” that attempts to legitimize the Russian military’s current and future mobilization plans.
The Russian Casualties
Despite the lack of significant large-scale offensive operations, the Russian military continues to suffer heavy casualties in Ukraine. It’s a war of attrition, and the Russian military is losing as we speak.
To be sure, the official Ukrainian claims are biased. For example, there hasn’t been a day since the start of the war in which the number of claimed Russian troops killed hasn’t been rounded up, whether that is 370 troops, as is the case on Thursday, or 250 or 500, as was the case on other days.
And yet, even with this apparent inconsistency, the Ukrainian claims of Russian casualties are a reasonable estimate of the number of men and weapon systems the Russian forces have lost in the war so far. A good chunk of those numbers have been corroborated by independent open-source investigators, such as the Oryx website, which adds a destroyed, damaged, or captured Russian weapon system to its very comprehensive lists of Russian casualties only after having visually verified the location of the item.
Overall, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claimed that as of Thursday, Ukrainian forces have killed approximately 66,650 Russian troops (and wounded approximately thrice that number), destroyed 269 fighter, attack, and transport jets, 243 attack and transport helicopters, 2,567 tanks, 1,646 artillery pieces, 5,255 armored personnel carriers, and infantry fighting vehicles, 372 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), 16 boats and cutters, 4,005 vehicles and fuel tanks, 189 anti-aircraft batteries, 1,311 tactical unmanned aerial systems, 147 special equipment platforms, such as bridging vehicles, and four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems, and 329 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses.
Civilian Casualties
The war also continues to take a heavy toll on the Ukrainian civilian population. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, since the start of the conflict, more than 6,300 civilians, including almost 400 children, have been killed due to Russian attacks.
Just the missile and drone salvos of the previous days added around 100 more killed civilians on that list and took out approximately 30 percent of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.
Expert Biography: A 19FortyFive Defense and National Security Columnist, Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.
