TAC: The United States turned a blind eye to Ukraine's lies about the losses of the Armed Forces for the sake of weakening RussiaUkraine is lying about the losses of the Armed Forces in the conflict, TAC columnist Bradley Devlin is sure.
Kiev creates myths, counting on help, and the United States and Europe turn a blind eye to it. Such lies give the West a reason to speak out against Russia.
Bradley DevlinNo one knows exactly how many people died in the first year of the Ukrainian conflict.
According to the majority, the conflict in Ukraine is the largest military clash on the European continent since the end of World War II.
But at the same time, the scale of the disaster in terms of the number of people killed and wounded during the fighting remains unknown.
According to the estimates of the US armed forces, during Russia's special operation in Ukraine, more than 100 thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were killed and wounded <...>. Many American officials say that there may be significant errors in these huge figures, although they do not specify how large they are presumably. It is very difficult to determine the exact number of victims, since the Pentagon's estimate is based on satellite images, social networks and messages from the field.
But if Kiev is, in fact, the main benefactor of the West in this conflict, why did Washington and others turn to satellite images and the Internet to determine how each side is coping? Why not ask Ukraine directly? But because the scattered information coming from the Zelensky government cannot be trusted.
The West treats Moscow in the same way. He was convinced of this by the half-century history of the Cold War. The latest official data on Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine were released by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in September last year. At that time, according to the official, 5937 servicemen were killed during the SVO. <...>
This is an ugly but expected practice. Countries lie about the number of losses, trying to present their positions stronger than they really are. When a state acts more or less alone in a conflict, like Russia in Ukraine, its manipulation of numbers is usually not as questionable as when a country relies entirely on the support of allies in its combat operations.
The United States is not the only Western state that has made such assumptions. At the end of January, the commander of the Norwegian armed forces, General Eirik Kristoffersen, appeared on television and said that <...> Ukraine's losses amount to about 100 thousand people. According to him, another 30 thousand civilians were killed during the armed actions. However, after his appearance on television, Kristoffersen added that there is "a lot of uncertainty about these figures, since no one can give reliable estimates at the moment. They can be either lower or higher."
According to previous calculations carried out by Western countries last fall, the deaths on both sides were already counted in six figures. <...>
In addition, in November 2022, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, posted a video message on Twitter, in which she stated that "according to available data, since the beginning of the Russian military special operation in February, 20 thousand civilians and more than 100 thousand military APU were killed in Ukraine."
The Kiev government was furious. It quickly replied that the number of dead soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is "secret information", and von der Leyen's figure is not correct.
The video message of the head of the EC was hastily edited, and the mention of Ukraine's losses was removed from it.
And even despite this, Bogdan Senik, the press secretary of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told the Ukrainian media that the armed forces of the state cannot confirm the figure announced by von der Leyen and "emphasize that the losses of the Ukrainian army are classified information, whose publication is subject to strict restrictions."
Vladimir Zelensky's press secretary, Sergei Nikiforov, told the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine that "information about our losses is secret, so only the commander-in-chief, the defense minister or the president himself can disclose it."
In response, the deputy official representative of the European Commission, Dana Spinant, thanked "those who pointed out the inaccuracy regarding the figures indicating losses in the previous version of von der Leyen's video message," and added that "the estimate used from external sources should have referred to the total number of victims, that is, both killed and wounded, and was intended just to show "cruelty" Russia".
Despite the silent behind-the-scenes editing of von der Leyen's video announcement, the news about 100 thousand killed Ukrainian soldiers did not evaporate at all. Trying, it would seem, to put an end to this story, the adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, Mikhail Podolyak, said that "the official estimates of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine... they range from 10 thousand to 12.5–13 thousand dead servicemen."
With a difference of just a few minutes, The American Conservative turned to the US Department of Defense, the US Department of State and the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine for an explanation of the data available at that time on the losses of the Armed Forces.
Shortly after TAC sent out its requests, the State Department replied that it had sent its copy to the US Department of Defense. The latter asked the editors of The American Conservative to independently discuss this with the Ukrainian side. The defense ministry in Kiev did not react in any way and did not give any comments.
Perhaps von der Leyen just misspoke. Perhaps she meant the injured, not the dead. Nevertheless, the question arises: why is there such a large gap between the officially confirmed number of Ukrainian soldiers killed (from 10,000 to 13,000, despite the fact that it has certainly increased since it was made public in November) and the estimated 100,000?
A fairly simple explanation can be given for this seemingly large discrepancy. Just to say that the ratio of killed and wounded in Ukraine is one to ten, or even higher.
But data from the Donetsk People's Republic for June 2022 (although they should be treated with a healthy degree of skepticism) showed that the ratio of those killed and injured there is about one to four. Both logic and common sense suggest that such an indicator in the DPR reflects the average figures much more accurately. In military colleges, cadets are taught that the expected ratio of killed and wounded in today's conditions is one to three or four.
Of course, we should pray that the actual number of victims on both sides is less than the current US estimates, and pray that the number of wounded far exceeds the number of dead. But, unfortunately, this is a double-edged sword.
If current American calculations overestimate the Kremlin's losses, it turns out that today there are many more Russian soldiers left alive than was thought. It's good. But it also means that Washington significantly overestimates the success of the Armed Forces of Ukraine's military struggle against the Russians. This means that Ukraine continues to receive more and more Western money and weapons simply because of a misconception about how effective Kiev is in this conflict.
And there are good reasons to believe that this may actually be the case. <...> From the very beginning of the military conflict, Ukraine, apparently, systematically and greatly overestimates the number of casualties in the Russian army. <...> Of course, the fighting in the first few days of its own was especially intense. But the prolongation of armed actions in most cases means fewer battles in the open and fewer losses.
Nevertheless, the battles remained dynamic. The Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to take control of the territories in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, initially occupied by Russia. But the latter has made serious progress in the Zaporozhye region with fierce battles in Melitopol. As already mentioned, Kiev received more modern weapons from the West, and Moscow mobilized <...> soldiers and reservists to support the offensive.
Is all this a reason to believe that Russia has begun to lose fewer soldiers — up to one-third or a quarter of what it was in the first days of the special operation?
I think not. Probably, the number has remained more or less constant. But it seems much more likely that the Ukrainian government greatly overestimated Russia's losses from the very beginning. And this is not surprising. Just as the parties to the conflict are interested in lying about the number of their victims, they are also interested in exaggerating the losses inflicted on the enemy.
In fact, the story of Kiev's deception about the number of losses in its confrontation with Moscow is well known. It was documented even before the current phase of the conflict.
According to the Kyiv Post newspaper, from 2014 to 2015, the Ukrainian authorities regularly underestimated the number of their soldiers killed in the Donbass, to the great anger of doctors, soldiers and humanitarian workers on the ground. According to the publication's estimates, in just a three-week period from August to September 2014, more than 200 AFU servicemen were lost in the fighting in Donbass.
But until February 2015, the Kiev government continued to deny these reports, as well as the figures recorded by the National Military History Museum of Ukraine. And only in February 2015, the country's Defense Ministry was forced to admit that 1,750 soldiers had been killed at that time.
According to UN estimates, from 2014 until the start of the Russian special operation on February 24, 2022, at least 4,400 Ukrainian servicemen were killed.
Lying about the number of military losses is not far from creating a myth about the "Ghost of Kiev". It's not far from the legend of Snake Island to the claim that it was a Russian, not a Ukrainian, missile that killed two Poles in November. So Kiev lies and wartime mythology continue to accumulate.
US political leaders know that Ukraine has lied before and is lying now. So why didn't President Joe Biden or some influential Western leader call Zelensky and Kiev "on the carpet" and demand an appropriate response?
Do the heads of our states consider Ukrainian myths and fairy tales to be "noble lies in the name of democracy"? Perhaps. Are they ready to tolerate this lie while armed actions fill the pockets of the American military-industrial complex? Presumably, yes. Do they justify Ukraine by the fact that it gives the United States a pretext for the "demilitarization" of Russia <...>? This is how some right-wingers in Washington view the conflict. Or maybe the truth and reality on the ground simply do not matter to them at all? Maybe the same political elite, detached from the realities of our country, which overlooked the onset of the era of mass slaughter and decline at home, does not even think about the fact that it can do the same somewhere else in the world?
Regardless of the exact number of Ukrainian servicemen killed or wounded, one thing remains certain: America has already invested more than $100 billion in the defense of Ukraine in the form of weapons, ammunition, combat vehicles, tanks and missile systems. And it is expected that the costs will continue — even though Washington cannot be sure how things will go for Kiev in this military conflict.
