Who could have ever guessed the "mighty" Russian military could suck this bad?
As of Tuesday morning, Oryx had cataloged more than 2,400 major piece of military equipment lost by the Russian armed forces, including some 400 tanks and 52 aircraft. These are confirmed losses verified by videos and photos that show distinct features—such as tail numbers on aircraft—that make sure each vehicle counted is unique.
However, that’s a long way from what the Ukrainian military says Russia has lost since the beginning of the invasion. They record over 200 more tanks, and nearly ten times as many aircraft in total (planes, helicopters, and UAVs).
The Defense Ministry also keeps a running total on something that Oryx and other sites cataloging lost hardware don’t touch: casualties. Russia, in the few occasions that it has given any count at all, has reported numbers that range from a fraction of those reported by Ukraine, to a ludicrously small fraction. Intelligence agencies in the U.S. and U.K. have also issued some sporadic casualty figures, with numbers that seem closer to—but still significantly lower—than those posted by Ukraine.
So who’s right? It’s quite likely that Russia doesn’t have an accurate count of their losses, even if they had any incentive to give it. It’s also generally assumed that the number from Ukraine overstates the results to make Russia look weaker and their own military more successful.
However, professor and author Phillips O’Brien suggests that Ukraine’s numbers, though they seem inflated, might be the most accurate of all those floating around. That’s because we have something in this war that hasn’t been available in other conflicts—open-source intelligence in the form of all those photos, videos, and messages captured by phones. While those images are the basis of the numbers reported by OSInt and Oryx, O’Brien points out that these numbers represent the absolute minimum for Russian losses. And the evidence of the last few days shows us just how badly these values can undershoot the truth.
“There would be a large number of Russian losses not recorded,” writes O’Brien. That would include any losses that took place inside territory that’s nominally under Russian control. A Russian jet that limps back to Belarus, or tumbles to the ground in Russian-controlled areas of Donetsk, is not going immediately get cataloged by social media. A tank that’s dead, but still in a Russian-occupied village, isn’t going to make it on OSInt.
It might seem that Russian losses behind Russian lines would be relatively minor compared to the vehicles left smoking along the roadside. But that’s only true when we can see those roads. War reporter Oz Katerji recorded more than 50 damaged or destroyed vehicles on a single walk up the highway along which Russian forces retreated from Kyiv. None of them were known before the last three days.
O’Brien has one word to describe the number of losses that are going unseen: Huge.
“For those behind Russian lines, we can now assume [losses] to be a very large number. Since the Russians pulled back from Kyiv, the database has been updated with approximately 50 new entries. Yet the Kyiv front only contained approximately 30% of Russian forces.”
Most of the vehicles being noted after Russia left Kyiv aren’t losses they suffered during retreat. Many are vehicles lost during the initial advance, or in days of exchanging fire with Ukrainian forces. They’re only new in the sense that, like the awful scenes of carnage in Bucha, they couldn’t be clearly noted until Russian forces left the area.
If Russian losses in other areas are any any way equivalent to those around Kyiv, then the numbers from the Ukrainian ministry of defense might actually be conservative.
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