Every Army Fighting In Ukraine Is Suffering Horrific Casualties

As Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its fifth month, the army of the separatist “republic” in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast still is losing 10 soldiers killed in action and another 50 wounded, every day on average.

That’s half as many daily KIAs—and two-thirds as many WIAs—as the Donetsk People’s Republic army suffered in the first three months of the war, when DPR units most visibly concentrated in the south. Casualties are down, in other words, as the fighting has shifted east.

But the DPR army still is losing the equivalent of 15 percent of its pre-war strength every month—a rate of loss that clearly is unsustainable over the long term.

The casualty figures from the DPR’s ombudsman are notable because they’re the only official tallies of dead and wounded from any army in the conflict. We can’t assume the armies of Ukraine and Russia—as well as Russia’s allies in the separatist regime in Luhansk Oblast plus the Wagner Group mercenary company—all are suffering proportional casualties.

But the DPR’s losses at least give us a sense of scale. Lots of people are dying in Ukraine. So many that sheer casualties, more than any territorial gains or losses, ultimately could determine winners and losers. Ukraine and Russia really are waging a war of attrition, and both sides are at risk of running out of troops.

It makes some sense that the DPR’s casualty rate would drop between late May and late June. Donetsk troops were in the front during Russia’s brutal assault on the Ukrainian garrison in Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov.

Thousands of Ukrainians fell back to the Azovstal steel plant with its extensive bunkers and tunnels. The garrison’s 2,500 survivors finally surrendered in mid-May—nearly three months after Russian, DPR and LNR surrounded Mariupol and cut it off from sustained resupply.

The Mariupol battle was a meat-grinder for both sides—but especially for the separatists. The bloodiness of the fighting around Azovstal helps to explain why the DPR army lost half its pre-war strength in the first three months of the war.

As it wound down its siege of Mariupol—and already having pulled its battered battalions out of northern Ukraine—the Kremlin in April and May shifted its focus to eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Specifically aiming to dislodge Ukrainian troops from the twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, respectively, abutting the east and west banks of the Donets River.

The cities anchored the eastern end of a 40-mile-deep pocket of Ukrainian territory surrounded on three sides by the Russians and their allies. The Russians concentrated their remaining forces—and, more importantly, their artillery—around the pocket. After two months of relentless bombardment, the Ukrainians in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk withdrew west to their next defensive position, around the town of Siversk.

The DPR army does not appear to have played a leading role in this phase of the war. Rather, the Kremlin heavily has leaned on the remnants of its elite airborne forces, as well as on Wagner mercenaries.

It’s possible Russian commanders concluded the paratroopers and mercenaries were better-equipped for a frontal assault on entrenched Ukrainian troops with intact supply lines. It’s equally possible the DPR army simply wasn’t available, because it was exhausted after experiencing 50-percent attrition.

To be clear, the Ukrainian and Russian armies have suffered heavy casualties, too. Officials in Kyiv last month warned Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200 troops a day in Donbas. The Russian army’s own losses—potentially tens of thousands of killed and wounded—compelled the Kremlin to begin cobbling together fresh units with second-line troops, reservists and instructors.

A new volunteer battalion that formed within the Russian navy’s 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade is indicative. “This battalion consists of reservists, volunteers, military policemen, servicemembers from coastal defense units and sailors from various naval vessels, which likely means that the volunteers are inadequately trained and do not have the requisite infantry experience to be effective in high-intensity combat,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. reported.

The ad hoc formations are set to play an increasingly central role in the fighting. “Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations,” according to the U.K. Defense Ministry.

These are not the moves of a robust army that’s comfortably managing its wartime losses. The “composite nature” of the 200th MRB battalion “indicates that Russian military leadership continues to struggle with proper and consistent constitution of combat-ready units,” ISW explained.

But the Ukrainian army is struggling, too. Kyiv is trying to balance operations along three fronts: holding in the northeast around Kharkiv and conducting a fighting retreat west across the Donbas pocket while also sustaining a slow, steady counteroffensive toward Russian-occupied Kherson in southern Ukraine.

All three fronts are fragile. Russian and Ukrainian battalions keep swapping terrain around Kharkiv. The Ukrainian troops in Lysychansk quit that city just a few days after pulling out of Severodonetsk, despite the former occupying higher and more defensible ground than the latter.

And in the south, Ukrainian brigades have attacked toward Kherson from several points. It’s hard to say just how much success they’ve had in recent weeks. ISW’s assessments indicate the Ukrainians slowly are advancing. The Kremlin’s own public releases point to a fairly static front line.

In any event, it’s clear what’s not happening in the south. The Ukrainian army isn’t making rapid, durable and easily observable gains. The at-best slow—if not stalling—counteroffensive hints at Ukraine’s own heavy losses.

After nearly five months of combat, every fighting force in Ukraine is badly damaged. The army that makes good its losses, first and best, could have the advantage as the war wears on.