Civilian casualties
The horrific images of the bombed Mariupol suggest that many hundreds if not thousands of civilians have been killed. On Friday, the Ukrainian government announced that a week earlier, 300 civilians had been killed in the bombing of a theater that served as a shelter.
In the fog of war it is almost impossible to determine exactly how many victims have been caused by such rocket attacks. Warring parties often also have an interest in twisting numbers. They exaggerate the successes and hide losses.
Within the Clingendael Institute, people regularly complain about unrealistic figures that are circulated mainly on social media, says a spokesperson. ‘A thorn in the eye’. Information about the number of deaths is the least reliable, says Kars de Bruijne van Clingendael. The incentive to exaggerate is the greatest.
To rule out exaggeration, the United Nations (UN) reports daily only the number of civilian deaths that has been officially determined. Since the organization cannot verify all deaths itself after the invasion of Russia, it partly depends on local contacts for verification.
According to the UN, 1,081 civilians have been killed and 1,707 injured since the war broke out in Ukraine. According to the UN, these official numbers are a major underestimate due to the procedure followed. In order to get an idea of the seriousness of the war, it is therefore also useful to look at the development of the figures on these deaths. This shows that the death toll has been rising at a steady pace for weeks and the war is still just as fierce as it was when it started.
Missile attacks and battle locations
The Acled (Armed Conflict and Location Event Data) reports once a week figures on battle locations and attack type. Acled uses local news sources, eyewitnesses, checks photos and obtains information from local parties. Acled’s data confirms the view that the war is concentrated around the eastern regions and important cities such as Kyiv and Mariupol. The weekly update will also allow the numbers to show whether the intensity of the war is changing.
Should the Russian army, as announced, want to shift the emphasis to the Donbas, this could soon be substantiated on the basis of Acled’s data. Just before the start of the war, there were also many records of violence near the separatist areas of Luhansk and Donetsk, according to the data.
Last week, nearly 300 airstrikes, or shelling, more than 100 direct battles and 40 incidents of violence against civilians were reported. If Acled has only one source that cannot be verified, the data will not be logged. It is therefore plausible that the numbers are actually higher.
Losses of military equipment
The available figures on losses of tanks, aircraft and other equipment are difficult to verify. The Ukrainian government, for example, publishes data on a daily basis, but these are described as unreliable by Clingendael.
The Dutch initiative Oryxspioenkop is attempting to count all destroyed tanks, planes and other vehicles on the basis of photos. With every photo of destroyed equipment, the civil initiative checks whether the photo was actually taken in Ukraine and whether the military vehicle in question has not been counted before. Oryxspioenkop also keeps a photo of all the destroyed material as proof.
Under this manual approach, 1,987 Russian vehicles have been destroyed since the beginning of the war, 311 of which were tanks. In the air, the Russians have lost 16 planes, 35 helicopters and 16 drones. On the Ukrainian side, losses are somewhat lower.
So far, the citizens’ initiative has counted 574 destroyed vehicles, 79 of which were tanks. The Ukrainians lost 12 planes, 9 drones and 1 helicopter. The figures of Ukrainian casualties are probably an underestimate, as Russian soldiers are not allowed to carry mobile phones with them to take images. While Ukrainian soldiers and civilians with mobile phones try to capture as much destroyed Russian equipment as possible.
With the cooperation of Sjors Hofstede.