Ukraine loses fewer soldiers than Russia – but it still loses the war

The war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine is killing soldiers at a rate not seen in Europe since World War II.

Ukrainian artillery fires, explosive drones and mines kill Russian troops as they repeatedly charge into in-man land. While the Ukrainian positions are exposed, they suffer heavy casualties inflicted from afar by Russian drones, shells and glider bombs.

Calculating the scale of casualties, and therefore the trajectory of the war, is difficult: the information is a state secret in both countries. The Ukrainian government has been particularly secretive, restricting access to demographic data that could be used to estimate its losses.

The most comprehensive indictments of Ukraine’s dead soldiers are made by groups abroad with biased or opaque motivations.

Working with incomplete information, experts estimate that Ukraine suffered about half of Russia’s irreplaceable losses – the deaths and injuries that take soldiers out of battle indefinitely – in the nearly three-year war.