Ukraine: 600k Russian Dead

The Russian invasion of Ukraine passed another milestone: 600,000 Russian dead (and counting).

Russian Casualties in Ukraine: more, and more, and more

Here on this Crummy Little Blog That Nobody Reads (CLBTNR), we’ve been following for some time the sad news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]}

Of course we want to know why casualties fit a linear model in time so well, how Russia keeps losing ships in a land war against a nation that has no navy, and how a smaller nation like Ukraine has ended up controlling a couple hundred square kilometers of Russian territory.

But our most important question is: why does this keep going on, and on, and on?!

We can only speculate that Putin simply cannot stop, lest he be deposed and executed by angry Russian oligarchs or organized crime or just other Russian “politicians”.

In the meantime… 450k dead on 2024-Apr-10, 500k dead on 2024-May-25, and now 600k dead on 2024-Aug-19:

Previously, we built a linear regression model, regressing daily casualty data versus time, from 2023-Jan-22 to 2023-May-17, they reached 200,000 Russian dead. The data fit a linear model remarkably well, almost too much with $R^2 \sim 99.43\%$.

Let’s check in on that model, and review how the later data reports at 450k, 500, and 600k fall with respect to its prediction.

That’s what we see here:

• The first 200k casualties are in the lower left in blue, exhibiting eerily smooth linear growth.
• The gray band around the bluepoints is the uncertainty of the fit, i.e., it’s very good indeed.
• The 3 red points in the upper right represent the days of 450k, 500k, and 600k casualties, respectively.

The result seems clear: Russian casualties are above trend, growing more than we would expect from the first 200k deaths. Judging by the (crudely calculated!) confidence and prediction bands, this looks statistically significant, i.e., a real thing.

It seems that either the Ukrainians, despite being hobbled by throttling of their weapons supplies, are fighting ever more effectively? Or, possibly more believably: Russians, always unafraid to take high casualties are simply throwing conscripts into a meat grinder for inscrutable reasons of their own?

The Weekend Conclusion

If you will forgive me for having a US-centric viewpoint, it seems that a lot of this hangs on the outcome of the US election.

• Biden, while honorably supporting the defense of Ukraine, has been hobbled by Congressional Republicans trying to cut off funding even at the level of threats of US government shutdowns.
• Perhaps if there is a Democratic trifecta (Presidency, Senate, House), then after 2025-Jan-20 we might see more weapons and a more decisive outcome in Ukraine.

Anything less than a trifecta will lead to a more equivocal response. Divided government will, for now, be crippled government.

Yes, more weapons would lead to more deaths in the short-term. In the medium term, it would end the Russian invasion and thus preventing more deaths. In the long term, it would shut down the Russian imperialism project and avoid a larger scale war in Europe, thus preventing horrific numbers of deaths.

(Ceterum censeo, Trump incarcerandam esse.)

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Notes & References

1: Weekend Editor, “Another Grim Anniversary”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2023-Mar-02. ↩

2: Weekend Editor, “Do the Ukrainian Reports of Russian Casualties Make Sense?”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2023-Apr-15. ↩

3: Weekend Editor, “Update: Ukrainian Estimates of Russian Casualties”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2023-May-01. ↩

4: Weekend Editor, “Updated Update: Ukrainian Estimates of Russian Casualties”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2023-May-09. ↩

5: Weekend Editor, “Updated${}^3$: Ukrainian Estimates of Russian Casualties Hit 200k”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2023-May-17. ↩

6: Weekend Editor, “Ukraine Invasion: 250k Russian Dead”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2023-May-17. ↩

7: Weekend Editor, “Tacitus in Ukraine”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2023-May-25. ↩

8: Weekend Editor, “Casualties in Ukraine: Grief Piles Higher & Deeper”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2024-Apr-10. ↩

9: Weekend Editor, “Post-Memorial Day Thought: 500k Russian Dead in Ukraine “, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2024-May-31. ↩