Radio Liberty spoke with Conflict Intelligence Team analyst Kirill Mikhailov about how casualties are calculated during armed conflicts and what data should be trusted.
The last time the Russian Ministry of Defense spoke about the losses was four months ago - then it was announced the death of 1351 people. At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine regularly publish their estimates of the number of dead Russian military: on July 22, the department reported that it had reached 39 thousand.
Western intelligence agencies also periodically submit their data on Russian losses.. On July 21, CIA Director of Intelligence William Burns said that the Russian army during the invasion of Ukraine lost 15,000 people killed and " At the end of April, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace gave the same assessment..
CIT analyst Kirill Mikhailov admitted in a conversation with Radio Liberty that he does not know where the CIA gets data on the number of Russian military dead in Ukraine.
According to him, “it’s hard to say how Western intelligence does it, but you need to understand that their estimates still fall into approximately the same range.”.
— There were various Western estimates ranging from 15 to 30 thousand. The fact that they are approximately the same suggests that, in general, their methodology should be trustworthy,” the expert noted..
According to CIT, the number of Russian military dead in Ukraine is from 15,000 to 22,000.
- This is our more or less conservative assessment, said the source of Radio Liberty. -... 15 thousand can be considered the lower bar of Russian losses.
As for the number of wounded, according to Mikhailov, the generally accepted ratio - three wounded to one killed - is very bad.. So, in the United States, it ranged from one to six in Vietnam to one to ten in Iraq..
“But, given the deplorable state of Russian tactical medicine, which does not allow prompt rescue of the wounded, and given the certain remoteness of hospitals located on the Russian side of the border, a ratio of one to three seems plausible,” Mikhailov agreed..
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