A month of war raging in Ukraine. A month that the dead accumulate, soldiers as well as civilians. A month that the people who reside in the country must flee the death arrived by the convoys of the Russian army. On the night of February 23-24, 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine under the pretext of “denazifying” the neighboring country. An operation which was intended to be lightning and was to last two days. More than 30 days later, the Kremlin’s objective is far from being achieved, coming up against Ukrainian resistance which does not intend to give in to Moscow’s demands. And the toll is growing with daily announcements of additional dead fallen under the bullets or in the bombardments.
These figures should be taken with great caution because the war in Ukraine is also a war of information and disinformation. Each party can benefit from the announcements it makes to its troops but also to third countries, knowing that military and civilian losses are sometimes difficult to verify on the ground by independent bodies.
- Six Russian generals killed
The dead can be counted on both sides of the conflict. The Russian army would have lost six generals in the fighting according to an announcement from kyiv on Friday March 25, Ukraine claiming to have killed a Russian general during fighting in the south of the country, according to an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Oleksiï Arestovych. “Our troops (…) killed the commander of the 49th army of the southern district of Russia, General Yakov Rezantsev, in a bombardment of the airfield of Chornobaivka”, located in the Kherson region (south), a said the adviser in a video message. Kyiv has previously claimed responsibility for the deaths of generals Andrei Sukhovetsky, Andrei Kolesnikov, Vitali Guerassimov, Oleg Mitiayev and Andrei Mordvichev.
For its part, Russia has so far only confirmed the death in Ukraine of General Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st army after serving in Syria in 2018-2019, as well as the number 2 of the sea fleet Black, Captain Andreï Paliï. “Another two-star general was killed today on the Russian side, the second in twelve days,” retired American general Mark Hertling told CNN on March 8.
- Between 1351 and 12,000 Russian soldiers killed
More broadly, Russia has acknowledged the death of 1,351 of its soldiers since the start of its military offensive. Since the start of the intervention in Ukraine on February 24, “1,351 soldiers have been killed and 3,825 injured,” said Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff Sergei Roudskoy on Friday during a press briefing. The previous official report from Moscow, dated March 2, reported 498 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine. kyiv, for its part, reports much heavier losses in the ranks of the Russian army.
However, the Russian media Komsomolskaya Pravda known to be close to the Kremlin relayed on March 20 that the Russian army had 9,861 dead and 16,153 wounded. According to BFM TVhowever, this information was quickly removed from the site after 30 minutes.
The number of soldiers killed is impossible to verify. US intelligence, quoted by the New York Times, estimates for its part that the Russians lost more than 7000 soldiers in one month. This is a figure higher than the combined American losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. NATO seems aligned with this source since the organization estimated on Wednesday March 23 that between 30,000 and 40,000 Russian soldiers are no longer fit to fight. Among them, soldiers killed, wounded, prisoners and missing. kyiv even goes so far as to count 12,000 Russian casualties.
- At least 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers killed
kyiv, for its part, affirmed on March 12 that it had lost 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers – a figure that was undoubtedly far below the reality. Almost two weeks after this count, this figure is surely much higher and now has little meaning. Moreover, this information only comes from one source, Ukrainian, so we should be careful here again.
- 1035 civilians killed, 1650 injured
No precise assessment of civilian casualties is available. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), however, mentions 2,685 civilian victims in the country, including 1,035 killed and 1,650 injured, according to the latest report updated on Thursday 24 March. Among the civilians killed, OHCHR counts 214 men, 160 women, 14 girls and 28 boys, as well as 48 children and 571 adults whose sex is still unknown.
“Most of the recorded civilian casualties were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a large impact area, including heavy artillery fire and multiple launch rocket systems, as well as missile strikes and airstrikes,” the organization said. There is little doubt that the actual balance sheets are much higher. Indeed, the OHCHR believes that “the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some places where intense hostilities are taking place has been delayed and many reports are still awaiting corroboration”.
Several cities are then cited as an example like Mariupol, where 300 people were killed in the theater of the city bombarded by Russian aviation on March 16, according to the town hall of the city citing witnesses. The Kharkiv region, which is under intense bombardment, or Lugansk and Sumy are also mentioned.
Other figures that change daily: that of internally displaced persons and that of refugees. Nearly 3.7 million people have fled Ukraine and the fighting, according to the UN count published on Friday, which confirms the slowdown in the number of passages in recent days. In total, more than ten million people, more than a quarter of the population, had to leave their homes.
The UN estimates the number of internally displaced people in Ukraine at almost 6.5 million. The High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) listed exactly 3,725,806 Ukrainian refugees on its dedicated website. These are 50,854 more than during the previous tally on Thursday.
Since March 22, the number of people seeking to flee fighting and increasingly difficult living conditions in Ukraine has fallen below 100,000 people a day. Europe has not seen such a rapid influx of refugees since World War II. Some 90% of those who fled Ukraine are women and children. According to Unicef, more than 1.5 million children are among those who fled.
Before this conflict, Ukraine was populated by more than 37 million people in the territories controlled by kyiv – which therefore does not include the Crimea (south) annexed in 2014 by Russia, nor the eastern areas under control pro-Russian separatists since the same year.