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Attrition of Russian forces by calendar year. [1]
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Date: 2025-01-01
The current invasion of Ukraine began in late February 2022. I think the destruction of men and materials is best understood if we compare daily rates rather than the amount of destruction that happened in the year. When I say, “2022,” I mean the last 311 days of that year.
“casualties” involves deaths and serious wounds, as defined by the Ukrainian military. If some of the complaints of Russian soldiers are accurate and people are going into “meat assaults” on crutches, some of the people on those lists might be being counted twice. Other comments follow the numbers.
Casualties / day:
2022 and 2023 (I couldn’t find separate numbers) -- 531.4
2024 — 1,176
Jan. — Nov. 2024 — 1,138
Dec. 2024 — 1,585
Tanks / day
2022 — 9.7
2023 — 8.1
2024 — 10.1
Jan. — Nov. 2024 — 10.4
Dec.2024 — 6.6
Armored personnel vehicles / day
2022 — 19.5
2023 — 13,7
2024 — 24.5
Jan. — Nov. 2024 — 24.7
Dec. 2024 — 21.7
Artillery pieces / day
2022 — 6.5
2023 — 17.7
2024 — 35.7
Jan. — Nov. 2024 — 37.1
Dec. 2024 — 20.0
Vehicles and fuel tanks / day
2022 — 15.1
2023 — 18,0
2024 — 58.3
Jan. — Nov. 2024 — 57.1
Dec. 2024 — 70.8
Anieli reprints the Ukrainian military’s estimates of Russian losses, and I calculate some averages and run them as comments on her diaries. That made me think that something had changed in the late part of this year. That’s why I ran December as a separate line, and the results justify my suspicions. The question is, “Why did these figures change? They can change because Ukraine improves its targeting skills or changes its priorities between different targets or because Western suppliers change the availability of weapons or ammunition. They can change because Russia improves its avoidance tactics or uses older equipment with less ability to defend itself, or because Russia changes the amount of one weapon or another it brings within range.
I was taking “vehicles” to mean supply trucks, and then a report came out that, one day, a record on vehicles was set but the majority of those vehicles was motorbikes, it obviously excludes both heavy and light armor, but it may include the unarmored vehicles that Russia now uses to charge the line. If so, the increase in vehicles hit may be from different vehicles being introduced for different purposes. (The increase in vehicle losses is older than December. They ran 82.3 / day in November and 77.8 / day in October. It seemed to me that “vehicles” and casualties fluctuated in synch; this would support the idea that vehicles now include unarmored transport used to attack.
The most favorable reason for a drop in Russian losses in any particular weapon system would be that they were using fewer because they are running low. “Running low” doesn’t necessarily mean “Running out.” Their stocks might be getting so low that they save them for special needs. That is quite likely happening with artillery. The daily losses in artillery were only slightly higher in December than half of their losses in earlier months of the year, and this included a major period when Ukraine was limited in counter-battery ammunition.
Other parts of the Ukrainian army’s reports on Russian losses suggest that Russia should be running low on APV. If so, they aren’t losing significantly fewer; so, they probably aren’t using significantly fewer. The shift in number of tanks is larger than that of APVs but smaller than the shift in number of artillery. 28.4% higher than ‘23 in the earlier part of the year and 18.5% lower in December.
The big swing comes in casualties. Of course, that now includes N. Koreans, but the December number is nearly 3 times the ‘23 number. Can Russia sustain that rate? Will Kim agree to maintaining N. Korea’s share of that rate? N. Korea has one of the largest militaries in the world, but it doesn’t have a matching size of population.
These numbers raise more questions than they answer, but the next few months might answer some of those questions.
[END]
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