Open source data and implied trends in KIA ratio for Russia versus Ukraine
There was some horrendously grim reading from the excellent Frontelligence Insight, talking about casualty ratios between Russia and Ukraine.
By combining the available data on obituaries found over time with the total KIA estimated by Frontelligence, we get the following graph.
This is a very simple estimate but I’ll use it as a starting point to show where the evidence is pushing me so far. The numbers will be off, but will the errors be so big they cancel out the overall pattern? There really is a lot of evidence that Russian casualties increased greatly in late 2024, but the evidence on Ukrainians is a bit shaky. The ualosses.org site certainly seems slower to update than the Poteru database of Russian obituaries.
Here are some things I’m considering and will keep looking for evidence on, then will update my numbers as the evidence arrives.
Maybe Frontelligence, being pro-Ukrainian, is underestimating losses. If Ukrainian deaths are actually 120k then we should shift the ratio by about 33%, i.e. instead of being over 5:1 in Ukraine’s favour, it would be just under 4:1.
The errors are also likely to change in time, thanks to issues like different delays in reporting for Ukraine versus Russia. I just scaled the obituary counts by a constant number for each side.
I don’t know if Frontelligence included non-Russians fighting for Russia. At least 20,000 Ukrainians appear to have died being forced to invade their own country. That would increase the loss ratio on my graph.
There appear to be huge differences in medical treatment between each side, with Russia generally abandoning more people to die instead of saving them to be severely wounded. The true casualty ratio, including severely wounded, is likely far less positive for Ukraine.
In terms of explaining what’s happened and the expectations from now, it’s easy to fit a narrative but harder to know how true it is. Russia started with a professional army that got to choose its offensive plan against an enemy that wasn’t prepared. Its massive armour, air and firepower superiority meant low casualty ratio. Wagner’s meatwave assaults in Bakhmut boosted the ratio in 2023H1, then Ukraine switched to the offensive in June—August 2023, then later periods were Russia’s major offensive.
Republicans blockaded aid to Ukraine in late 2023 & early 2024, helping to preserve the Russian army and increasing Ukrainian casualties, which certainly worsened the ratio, allowed Russia to attack for longer and to take more positions. Then the combination of US and European aid plus the exhaustion of Russian armour and the switch to meatwaves resulted in a surge in Ukraine’s favour again in late 2024.
While I do think Russia is preparing its last major armoured force from what’s left in the Soviet storages, I suspect the Republicans saw this and anticipated that the KIA ratio was very likely to get even better from Ukraine’s point of view. Perhaps Russia could even wear through the shells that North Korea is willing to spare, and the firepower ratio would shift in Ukraine’s favour, resulting in even more extreme casualty ratios. The new Republican blockade makes sense if they saw this coming and realised that they needed to act quickly and blockade arms & intel to Ukraine in order to save Putin’s army. It’s the only theory that fits their actions so far. Unless Ukraine is in a worse position than known, and unless Trump & Putin can force a rapid capitulation, the Republican actions should help to drive down the future casualty ratio and enormously help Putin’s army.