The war in Ukraine has been going on for more than 17 months (503 days). During that time, the front lines have shifted several times.
But the fighting has been taking place in a country that is full of people. As a result, civilian casualties from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” are sky-high.
The Unseen Toll of the War in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine is a full-blown tragedy, and civilians have suffered under Russian occupation and by attacks against urban centers.
As of July, there are close to 9,000 civilian casualties and over 700 attacks on medical facilities and health workers. This is after Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense repeatedly stated that Russian forces are only attacking military targets and infrastructure.
Russian ballistic and cruise missiles and suicide drones are responsible for the majority of civilian casualties. Starting in October under General Sergei Surovikin, the chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Moscow launched an extensive long-range strikes campaign against Ukraine. The Kremlin’s and Surovikin’s goal was to destroy Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and make life impossible for the Ukrainian population.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to civilian casualties, there is an extremely large number of Ukrainians who have had to leave their homes and become refugees.
According to the United Nations, more than 6.3 million Ukrainians remain refugees abroad (mainly in bordering countries), and over 5 million are displaced within Ukraine. For a country with a pre-war population of 44 million, having about one-quarter of its population displaced is a catastrophe.
Since last summer, the Ukrainian authorities have evacuated (under emergency legislation) close to 140,000 civilians from the combat zones in eastern Ukraine, the Donbas, and southern Ukraine.
Moreover, there are tens of thousands of Ukrainian children who have been essentially kidnapped by Russian officials and transported to Russia to live and grow up as Russians.
Of course, we shouldn’t forget that Russian occupation forces have committed blatant war crimes in several places, most notoriously in the Bucha suburb of Kyiv.
But these numbers aren’t the only casualties of the war.
Military Casualties
The number of killed and wounded troops on both sides isn’t clear. What is clear, however, is that both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries have suffered extremely heavy losses in the war so far.
On the Russian side, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claims to have inflicted more than 230,000 casualties on the Russian forces. Those numbers are corroborated to a large extent by the U.S Intelligence Community and Western intelligence services.
As far as Ukrainian casualties, the exact number is unknown. Kyiv has been holding a tight lead on its military losses, but it is safe to assume that the Ukrainians have lost more than 100,000 men. The main difference with the Russian casualties is that a lot of the Ukrainians are wounded, and because the Ukrainian forces have a better military medicine program, wounded troops tend to survive, contrary to the Russians who, due to poor medicine, are losing men that could have been saved.
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.
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