Ukraine War Losses: Shocking Figures Defining Year After Invasion

It is exactly one year to the day since Russian warplanes first struck Kyiv and a huge battery of Moscows tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin began its shock assault on Russia’s sovereign neighbor.

Twelve months on, and it has long been clear that the blitz Putin expected to see his troops take Kiev in just 10 days has instead turned into a grinding war of attrition – on a scale not seen in Europe for decades.

As the conflict – currently centered in the Donbas region – shows no sign of abating as both sides plan renewed counter-offensives, The independent has taken a look at some key figures that illustrate the brutal impact of Russia’s invasion.

4,850,000: The number displaced

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than eight million people have so far been forced to leave Ukraine since Russia’s February 24 invasion.

Of these, more than 4,850,000 have been resettled under a national protection scheme in Europe, including 161,000 in Britain, according to the UN agency.

The larger figure also includes more than a million Ukrainians now in Russia, according to UNHCR.

The United States has warned that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been forcibly deported to Russia during the war, including children separated from their families. disclosures of The independent that citizens “disappear” in what amounts to further possible war crimes.

8,006: The number of Ukrainian civilians killed in the past year

Although the true extent of civilian casualties is unknown, the latest estimate by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) suggests that at least 7,199 civilians had been killed and 11,756 injured as of 12 February.

Those victims include 2,888 men, 1,941 women, 180 girls and 226 boys, as well as 32 children and 1,932 adults whose gender is still unknown, according to OHCHR – which has been monitoring the situation since war with Russian-backed separatists broke out in Donbas in 2014.

March 2022 saw the highest number of deaths in the conflict so far with 3,326 in that month alone.

While most of the known civilian casualties have been caused by shelling from heavy artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, missiles and airstrikes, the human rights agency warns that the true number is likely to be much higher.

This is because there are delays in confirming reports of civilian casualties in areas that have seen intense hostilities – such as Mariupol, Izium, Lysychansk, Popasna and Sieverodonetsk – while territory is still held by Russia can still give evidence of summary executions and torture.

Russia has often denied targeting civilians in the face of evidence to the contrary, and has claimed evidence of massacres and torture in Bucha after its troops withdrew was a “hoax, a staged production and provocation” by Kiev.

200,000: The estimated number of Russian troops lost in the conflict, according to the Ministry of Defense

Russia is likely to have suffered between 175,000 and 200,000 casualties since invading Ukraine a year ago, Britain’s Ministry of Defense claimed in an “intelligence update” on Friday.

This likely includes the deaths of around 40,000 to 60,000 soldiers, both mercenaries and those employed by the Russian Ministry of Defence, according to Britain.

The assessment of up to 200,000 victims is in line with assessments from the US military to New York Times earlier this month – but the casualty estimates fall well short of the nearly 145,000 soldiers Ukraine’s military claims to have “liquidated”.

The Russian casualty rate has risen significantly since September 2022 when Putin invoked a “partial mobilization” and began sending increasingly poorly trained and ill-equipped recruits – including prisoners freed from prisons by the Wagner group of mercenaries – to the front line in Bakhmut, according to Western analysts.

100,000: The estimated number of Ukrainian troops who have died

Norway’s defense chief, General Eirik Kristoffersen, said in January that he believed Ukraine had seen 100,000 of its troops killed or wounded in action. In another email Timeshis spokesperson said there was “a lot of uncertainty about these numbers, as nobody can give a good overview at the moment. They could be both lower and even higher.”

In December, Ukrainian officials put the number of soldiers lost at 13,000.

54: The percentage of land the Ukrainians won back from the Russians during the conflict

Despite its tanks initially breaking through to the outskirts of Kiev just days after the invasion, successive counter-offensives by an increasingly surging Ukrainian army have seen Russia cede huge chunks of territory.

Putin’s forces were first forced into a hasty retreat in central Ukraine just a month after launching their invasion, and were dramatically pushed out of the Kharkiv region in a major Ukrainian counter-offensive in September.

In a claim that closely mirrors other Western estimates, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told MPs in December that Britain believed Ukraine had retaken about 54 percent of the land seized by Russia.

While little territory has since changed hands, Moscow was believed to hold about 18 percent of internationally recognized Ukrainian territory — including Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

That compared with the 27 percent of Ukrainian land held by Russia at the height of the war in March, Wallace told the Commons.

£126.70 billion: The amount Ukraine’s allies have spent on military aid

The US is the biggest provider of military aid to Ukraine, having given Kiev £64.56 billion in military aid since February 2022, according to research by a German think tank.

As the second largest donor, the UK has committed £7.33bn to date – a number including the provision of Challenger 2 tanks.

Alongside its allies, Britain is also hosting a program aimed at training 10,000 Ukrainian personnel within four months.

According to the data, the total commitment from EU member states and EU institutions amounts to £48.45 billion.

Value £7.1 billion: The cost of destroyed infrastructure and buildings in Ukraine

Analysis by the Kyiv School of Economics, published in December, found that the total documented damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure since Russia’s invasion would cost around $137.8bn (£114.4bn) to replace.

Their analysis – along with Ukrainian and British government officials – found that a total of 149,300 residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed in the first 10 months of the war.

Russia has also caused an estimated $8.6 billion (£7.1 billion) in damage to Ukraine’s educational facilities, with hostilities damaging or destroying more than three thousand educational institutions, almost half of which were those providing secondary education, the analysis found.

Damage to cultural, sporting and religious sites was estimated at $2.2bn (£1.8bn), according to the analysis, which found 907 cultural facilities, 168 sporting facilities, 157 tourist facilities and 95 religious facilities had been damaged.

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Health Minister Viktor Liashko claimed that more than $1 billion was needed to rebuild the country’s medical facilities, claiming that 540 hospitals had been partially destroyed and 173 completely destroyed.

73: The number of tanks Britain has sent to Ukraine

Britain has sent 14 Challenge II tanks to Ukraine. The model was designed from 1986-1993 and saw action in Bosnia as well as the Iraq War.

Johnson’s government had been reluctant to commit tanks throughout 2022, but under new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak it was announced that the tanks would be deployed to Ukraine, along with 30 AS-90 155 mm self-propelled guns, as well as armored repair and recovery vehicles.

The US leads the way in tanks being sent to Ukraine with 31 Abrams tanks, while Germany and Poland have committed 14 Leopard 2 tanks each.

3,326: The number of tanks Russia has lost in the year-long conflict

According to figures from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Russia has lost 3,326 tanks since the war began a year ago.