"Bombshell" Report Claims Russian Casualties "Much Higher Than Thought" - Debunked?

Someone said it well yesterday: whenever Ukraine begins badly losing ground on the battlefield, they launch into a new propaganda campaign seeking to deride some major aspect of Russia’s operation.

In the recent case, after being subjected to massive strikes crippling Ukraine’s power grid and strategic areas, losing village after village each day, pro-UA pundit circles have embarked on a new narrative spree about Russian losses. This has been coordinated closely with Western outlets and institutions which have sought to generate a buzz around a report by MediaZona/The Economist which claims that Russia’s losses are actually “much higher than we thought.”

Here’s the companion piece by Economist which has some different charts for those interested:

https://archive.is/K8se7

First, the new MediaZona report comes at a rather ‘convenient’ time. You see, just recently Russian losses had actually dropped to a historic low for the conflict, such that even MediaZona appeared to have run cover for this damaging fact by unusually ceasing to even report losses for the past few weeks.

The trends were heading to such low casualty levels that, as seen in their own graphic below, MediaZona for the first time strangely stopped updating them:

Why would that be?

Then, totally out of the blue, they unleash an ‘explosive’ new ‘bombshell’ report which was picked up by all the typical propaganda pots, which claims that Russian losses are actually astronomically higher than anyone thought:

And get this, MediaZona arrived at the new figures by altering their previous methodology—how convenient!—to no longer include the actual confirmed KIA, but rather to extrapolate the losses via some new algorithm they derived. They’ve now discredited themselves by abandoning their original methodology by going out on a limb to include an obscure probate ‘will’ statistical ledger to estimate how many Russian ‘excess deaths’ there really might be.

Anyone familiar with how this stuff works will know this savors of precisely the type of desperate lane-change used by institutions when the numbers no longer reflect the approved narrative—see: WHO and their repeated fraudulent reclassifications during the Covid scam to massage the figures. The telltale sign is that the sudden about-face always comes at precisely the turning point where things are going south for them. So when the officially confirmed deaths began to slow to a trickle in the 50k’s, what do they do? Simply triple the numbers to 150k and call it a day.

See for yourself:

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/07/05/a-new-estimate-from-meduza-and-mediazona-shows-the-rate-of-russian-military-deaths-in-ukraine-is-only-growing

So, we’ve devised a “new method” that will conveniently now be included in all our future casualty reports as the ‘correct’ number despite it being triple that of our previous, actually corroborated, numbers. Isn’t it amazing how easily they can do this for Russian data but, as NY Times noted last time, when it comes to Ukraine, the casualties are ‘difficult’ to accurately assess?

In fact, similar independent estimates of Ukrainian “excess mortality” were done in the past which, to my recollection, showed off-the-charts numbers. Here’s one glimpse I could find with a cursory search:

https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/war-ukraine-assessing-human-and-environmental-costs

The problem is, the figures are old because Ukraine stopped officially reporting excess mortality rates—I wonder why? It’s certainly odd that Russia—claimed to have the far higher losses—continues reporting theirs, but Ukraine has mysteriously stopped.

This can be seen in charts like the following, geared toward the Covid pandemic, which shows Ukraine’s reported figures disappear at precisely the start of the conflict in early 2022:

Keep in mind, Russia’s numbers are skyhigh because Western organizations claimed Russia had the world’s highest excess deaths during Covid—but notice what happens at the start of the conflict, the numbers nearly flatline.

But what’s further interesting is the new MediaZona report uses another adjacent report focused on Wagner to justify their new claims. The most shocking revelation from this report is MediaZona goes on to ‘confirm’ that a whopping 88% of all Wagner fighters killed were actually ex-cons:

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/06/10/new-investigation-shows-that-yevgeny-prigozhin-s-wagner-group-lost-almost-20-000-men-in-the-battle-for-bakhmut-and-paid-their-families-more-than-a-billion-dollars-in-compensation

That means Wagner hardly even lost any “real” fighters, and merely used prisoners as their expendables. A loss is a loss, so I’m not saying this to dispute abstracted loss figures, but rather to make the point that organizations like MediaZona’s goal in highlighting all these numbers is obviously to press the narrative that the Russian Army is being attritioned, gradually losing effectiveness, and thus is losing, period. The goal of all of all this is to construct the fable that Ukraine is winning because Russia will soon have no trained soldiers left to fight. But here they admit that the actual trained soldiers were hardly even touched in this case, and nearly 90% were prison labor.

Sure, that’s only for Wagner you might say: except that in almost every other major ongoing front, we know the Russian army likewise utilizes Storm-Z as their ‘tip of the spear’—for instance, Avdeevka, where Storm-Z comprised perhaps the majority of vanguard assaults, according to reports. Morality issues aside, it clearly indicates the nominal Russian Army is not really the one experiencing attrition.

Naturally, taking Prigozhin at his word, they predictably downplay and whitewash the fact he also revealed Ukraine’s losses as 50-60k dead to his 20k in Bakhmut.

The truth is, all circumstantial evidence points to Ukraine having disproportionately massive casualties compared to that of Russia. Just as a quick recent example, a new report yesterday said that an application for 2400 “fallen hero” banners was made in Zhitomir, Ukraine:

Zhitomir has an official population of 262,000. Applying the ratio of 2400 dead out of Zhitomir’s 262k population to the entire population of Ukraine (40 million) yields about ~350,000 dead. If you apply it to 30 million, it yields ~250,000 dead.

2400/262,000 = x/39,000,000

x = 359,000

It’s fairly compelling that Zhitomir’s “fallen hero” death count seems to yield an extrapolation that fits quite well with actual projections for Ukraine’s total deaths.

Now, let’s see how this works for Russia with a recent estimate:

A small city in Siberia put up a war memorial. Let's see what it can tell us about Russian casualties in Ukraine.

The city in question in Cheremkhovo in the south of Irkutsk Oblast, bordering Buryatia. It's an old stop on the trans-Siberian railroad, with a population of about 80,000 between the city itself (50,000) and the surrounding rural district (30,000). Commemorating local residents fallen in Ukraine, the war memorial features three statues depicting Russian soldiers and two plaques listing 41 names between them. 41 people in a population of 80,000 is 0.051% of the local population killed in action in Ukraine. According to Mediazona's numbers, 1125 residents of Irkutsk Oblast have been killed in Ukraine, from a population of 2.4 million - this is 0.047% of the oblast residents, only slightly lower and easily explainable by somewhat higher enlistment rates in more remote areas like Cheremkhovo versus, say, Irkutsk City. I realize this is one very small data point, but it's yet another drop in the bucket of indicators that Mediazona's count of Russian casualties in Ukraine is largely correct and there is no pool of "hidden casualties" floating around out there, let alone a huge one as constantly alleged by Ukrainian propagandists. The local authorities of an unremarkable Russian city in the middle of Siberia are not going to leave a bunch of names off the war memorial - and enrage surviving family members - because they're trying to hide casualties on nefarious orders from Putin. And if they did we would hear about it, because Russians love nothing better than complaining about official incompetence.

So, we have two distinct data points above, where both happen to statistically correlate within a 92% confidence margin. If we apply the same ratio to the population of Russia, we get: 41/80,000 = x/144,000,000

x = 74,000.

Using Irkutsk oblast, we get:

1125/2,400,000 = x/144,000,000

x = 68,000.

Isn’t that interesting, how in both cases the numbers almost exactly match the most realistic set of losses we currently have? 68,000 - 74,000 is in line with MediaZona’s confirmed ~60k if you add their original ‘projected’ algorithm which provides for the assumption that some obituaries will be missed, and therefore losses are likely around 15-20% higher than the confirmed count. And in Ukraine’s case, the ratio extrapolation brings them into the 350-400k range which is where many authoritative sources have placed Ukraine’s figures, and which almost perfectly mirror the 5:1 ratio that Putin said Russia is inflicting on Ukraine, since ~70k x 5 = 350k.

The math doesn’t lie.

And by the way, the reason I italicized the word “recent” before is because this is just another in a long line of examples using recent data—but longtime readers will know I’ve actually done these calculations several times before, utilizing many other Ukrainian cities and their known cemetery/death counts, and it always amounts to the same conclusion. See here for more.

The fact is, it’s only in Ukraine where cemeteries have been growing so large that they’ve run out of space for the dead, forced to unearth old plots by the thousands. It’s only in Ukraine that you even see gigantic cemeteries that are visibly growing from space satellite imagery—there’s nothing of the comparable sort in Russia. It’s only in Ukraine that there’s daily critical discussions about lack of fighting men, where people are being kidnapped from the streets, women are increasingly in talks of being drafted, etc. Why don’t you see that in Russia if losses are so high?

They claim it’s because: “Russia has 5x the population!” But Ukrainians also claim they’re inflicting 5-10x the losses on Russia! Doesn’t that negate the population advantage? Shouldn’t Russia also be reeling in the way Ukraine is? The head of Ukrainian GUR Vadim Skibitsky himself publicly stated months ago that Russian brigades are at 95% staffing levels—how is that possible if the country is experiencing such levels of losses as these people claim?

Every single data point we have points to Ukraine suffering untold losses, not Russia.

Don’t forget the most damning of all: the POW disparity, that is at minimum a proven 5:1 in Russia’s favor, with recent revelations Ukraine had ~1300 Russians in captivity to the ~6500 Ukrainians captured by Russia.

MoA had a great thread on all of this a while back, wherein B quotes the following:

Historical war literature tells us that artillery accounts for around 75% of all casualties, and Russia has enjoyed upwards of a 10:1 artillery advantage for the duration of the conflict.

Detractors will claim: “But war theory tells us the attacker always suffers more casualties than defender.” Two major problems with that: firstly, this assumes the attacker and defender are equal in strength and power. You think an attacker of 1 million men will suffer far more casualties than the defender of 100 men, for instance? No, they would quickly swarm and kill them probably without even suffering a single casualty.

Likewise, Russia has vast material advantages and, now, even manpower advantages. Incomparable levels of artillery, mortar, air power, long range ballistic and other missile types, etc. The only possible claim Ukraine can lay is for FPV drones, and even that is questionable. Further, FPV drones do not actually inflict large losses comparatively speaking. Not only does it take a large amount of failed drone attacks to get one successful hit, but each successful hit actually produces very little collateral in man or materiel. That’s because the drones have so little explosive power, and the little they do have is most often used in cumulative or shaped-charge form, which only inflicts damage on targets directly in front of it in a narrow cone. That means for all of Ukraine’s drone prowess, it simply does not compare in the slightest to the destructive power of Russia’s conventional armament.

The second refutation of “the attacker always experiences more casualties” is that Ukraine has likewise been the attacker for a large portion of the war. Not the majority, of course, but a large enough slice as to represent a major increase in casualties. If you were comparing only a single battle, then pulling out that old tired mot may be more appropriate. But over the course of the entire conflict, where Ukraine has launched many offensive campaigns that were total bloodbaths, we can only conclude that the aphorism simply doesn’t apply here. Just think of the half year senseless deaths in Khrynki on the Dnieper, where the AFU threw insane meat assaults across the river of blood. Then there’s last year’s “counteroffensive” which, by Russia’s estimations, culled over 100,000 AFU soldiers alone. There were many other failed offensives as well. Tallying all those dead, how in one’s right mind can one invoke the “attacker suffers more” rule as a blanket generality over the course of the entire conflict?

An addendum to the above is that the pro-UA side will argue: “But artillery disparities have evened up! Ukraine now has as much artillery as Russia!”

Unfortunately, that’s not even remotely the case. And this has now been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt in today’s second news bombshell, this time from the NATO camp:

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-weapons-shells-european-union-eu-war-russia-investigation/33025300.html

That’s right, the CIA Radio Liberty project just released a damning new report that finds all European artillery ammunition estimates were grossly exaggerated. Are you surprised?

The findings sent shock waves through the pro-UA world; here’s a summary:

🏹 🇪🇺 🏭 EU lied about its artillery production.

— An investigation has found that Europe's artillery shell production for Ukraine is significantly lower than officially claimed.

— European Commission claimed production of 1 million 155mm shells annually as of January 2024.

— EU Commissioner Thierry Breton projected 1.7 million shells annually by end of 2024.

— Investigation suggests actual production is around 550,000 shells annually or even less.

🔶️ Rheinmetall document: EU production at 550,000 shells annually.

🔶️ Estonian defense ministry: 480,000 to 700,000 shells produced in 2023.

🔶️ One industry source: Less than 500,000 shells by end of 2024.

So, while they estimated 1.7M yearly production pace by end of 2024, they’re actually hitting less than 500k—almost a mere 25% of their blustered goals.

It’s another prediction of mine proven true. Some may recall when they estimated 1M but then revised it down to 600-700k or so, I said that the end result will be far less, because it was clear they were lying to desperately buttress Ukraine’s collapse.

Arms companies said the problem is a global shortage of gunpowder and explosives and a lack of cash to fuel the ammunition industry, with governments reluctant to sign long-term contracts.

Meanwhile, the same Western sources have already openly stated Russia is set to reach as high as 4.5 to 5 million shells yearly production by end of the year, with North Korea able to do another 5M. What legs do the arguments have to stand on, which claim that Ukraine can match Russian artillery devastation, and thus, casualty generation?

It’s clear there is no possible framework by which to argue that Ukraine has less casualties than Russia.

Ukraine takes out the odd one-man motorcycle rider here, a random straggler there, with lone FPV strikes. Meanwhile, Russia is not only dishing out 5:1 or 10:1 artillery barrage disparities, but even more devastating long range missile strikes, most of which go unreported and unglamorized because there are simply so many.

Yesterday, ex-Aidar deputy commander Ihor Mosiychuk revealed how Russian strikes just destroyed a huge concentration of AFU soldiers in a Vasilkov command post, near Kiev, in the recent missile attacks:

The Russian army destroyed many Ukrainian military personnel by attacking the Kiev air defense headquarters - Mosiychuk. Former Rada deputy Ihor Mosiychuk, accused the Ukrainian Armed Forces' command of concealing the truth about Russian strikes: "They concealed the hit on the Luch Design Bureau, the hit on Vasilkov, where a large number of military personnel were killed, and the Kiev and Kiev region air defense headquarters is located there - the command post," he stated.

Then today, we have a direct first hand source report from the commentator Masno, who himself stays in the region, that a Russian Iskander-M cluster attack devastated a large AFU convoy in Sumy region, inflicting 65-100 casualties:

2 Days ago, I told you about the Ukrainian military shooting down a Russian missile above Sumy. I can now confirm that in fact it was a Russian Iskander that hit a Ukrainian convoy. 2 Independent witnesses told me that Ukrainians suffered heavy casualties. The Russian MOD did release a video about this incident, but I did not link it until now. The person that I spoke to, told me that they can not put into words the carnage of the attack, and will go for psychological treatment. The other person explained that they live in the next village and saw the explosion in the sky and then the efforts to repatriate the wounded. The reason the Ukrainians were able to pass this off as an AD operation was that everyone saw the explosion in the sky, but did not think of it as cluster munitions (airburst warhead). I didn't initially quote the Russian military figures that they released (65), because I thought it was unlikely, however I am now as certain as I can be, that the number is actually higher.

The point is that, these are daily, almost mundane, strikes by Russian long range assets which are wiping out anything from dozens to hundreds of troops at a time. Recall that Zelensky himself said repeatedly that Russia launches thousands of Fabs per month, which translates to hundreds per day along the front, and around 50-80 on single hot zones like Volchansk or west Avdeevka. If each massively powerful Fab attack—particularly given that they’ve been using the stronger Fab-3000 variety more and more recently—inflicts even two or three casualties each, it would represent 10-20k per month just from that one munition alone, not even counting the vast artillery overmatch.

These are just from the past week alone—and there are many, many more, I just quickly chose a few of the best quality ones for illustrative purposes:

Look at that devastation—there is simply nothing comparable on the Ukrainian side. How many casualties per each of those hits do you think are generated? Now multiply that by Zelensky’s own estimate of hundreds launched per day.

No matter how you dice it, there’s just no way to argue Ukraine having less casualties than Russia. So, let’s just say for argument’s sake, even if the new MediaZona report was true, and Russia had upwards of 150k dead—how many dead does that consequently represent for Ukraine? Multiply that by several times. The bigger the number they make up for Russia, the larger their own casualty figure must necessarily be.

Folks, if you enjoy the content, don’t forget to subscribe to a paid membership:

Things are very cyclical, but recently has been a dry spell in both subscriptions and tips at: buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius

I can’t complain too much though, the blog’s still doing very well, all things considered. And I certainly understand that financial times are extremely tough right now, which is why I don’t begrudge anyone who’s not able to subscribe—all your patronage, both of the free and paid variety, is still greatly appreciated.

But for anyone else able and willing, who might be on the fence or has the ability to do so, it sure would be a big help if you subscribed today, especially given the new exclusive content you’ll have access to coming down the pipeline very soon.

---

Your support is invaluable. If you enjoyed the read, I would greatly appreciate if you subscribed to a monthly/yearly pledge to support my work, so that I may continue providing you with detailed, incisive reports like this one.

Alternatively, you can tip here: buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius

---