Mon 2024-Nov-04

Ukraine War: 700k Russian Dead

Tagged: MathInTheNews / Politics / Sadness / Statistics

The Russian dedication to killing their own military has staggered past another milestone: 700,000 Russian dead.

Unending Russian Casualties in Ukraine

Of course, the Ukrainian casualties are also unending, and as the innocent victims of an invasion deserve our sympathy more. However, the Russian casualties are the ones on which we have (somewhat) reliable data.

As we’ve extensively discussed before ^[1] ^[2] ^[3] ^[4] ^[5] ^[6] ^[7] ^[8] ^[9] ^[10], there are numerous sources of such data, many of which are highly manipulated in order to deceive. Interestingly, the figures released by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence seem to be in the middle of the pack. For that, and no other reason beyond availability, we’ve used them. That choice may be rebuttable, but it’s also defensible given what we know at the time.

So here’s the latest, showing 700,000 Russian dead, according to the Ukrainian MoD:

Back when we started tracking this, we built a regression model of Russian casualties over time. It fit a linear model almost eerily well, which makes me slightly suspicious of the data. The model fit the first 200,000 Russian casualties, which at the time seemed enormous.

Reviewing that model here, we see that the recent red data points (450k, 500k, 600k, and now 700k) are clearly above trend. (NB: This is a terrible way to estimate statistically the breaking of a trend. But it’s the thing that’s the least work for me, as curating all that daily data is a lot of work!)

The interesting questions for me:

Are Ukrainians just getting better at fighting, perhaps with better weapons?
Are Russians employing the infamous meat-grinder tactics of throwing wave after wave of untrained conscripts in an attempt to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses with human meat?
Is Putin stuck in the classic authoritarian trap, where he simply cannot stop lest he be deposed and executed?
What is it about human sacrifice that keeps luring people into this trap, in much the same way we hear Trump campaigning on threats of violence against his own people?

Indeed, Russia has engaged in a massive human sacrifice.

WorldOMeter estimates the Russian population as of today at 144,535,500. Consulting Wikipedia on the demographics of Russia, we see that except for elders, the male/female ratio ranges from 1.06 to 0.925. So let’s assume, admittedly roughly, that about half the population is male.

Consider this brutal fact: 1% of all Russian males is 0.01 * 144,535,500 / 2 = 722,678. So the current Ukrainian casualty figures are about 1% of all Russian males.

If we consider Russian males of military service age, say 18 - 44, that’s 34.73% of the Russian population (Wikipedia cites WorldOMeter as the source, which strengthens my confidence in WorldOMeter’s credibility). So we have to triple that 1% casualty rate, if we’re considering only Russian men of military age.

Conclusion: It is an even more brutal fact that about 3% of Russia’s men of military service age have died in Ukraine. So far.

The Weekend Conclusion

Perhaps a Democratic trifecta in Washington will be able to sweep away the Republicans who favor Putin and Russia. A better-armed Ukraine would lead to more short-term casualties, but in the longer term lead to peace. Or so one may hope.

On the other hand, a divided American government will be crippled by pro-Russia Republicans, and thus will merely twitch helplessly.

In the ancient world, there was a Canaanite deity called Moloch. Moloch offered a terrible bargain: sacrifice to Moloch everything that you value most, and he will grand you power. Typically this is represented as a bronze statue heated red-hot, into which children were thrown to be burned to death as sacrifices. (For moderns, a sense can be gained from Alan Ginsburg’s poem Howl, Scott Alexander’s remarkable essay “Meditations on Moloch”, and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (video shown here) as a modern industrial metaphor.)

Some of our more Molochian traditions involving sacrificing family, relationships, love, art, and trust in order to gain career skills, money, or political power. In that sense, as a symbol, Moloch is very much not dead.

Russia, it appears, is trapped in the Moloch cycle of sacrifice of its young men for the power of its old men. That cycle does not break easily.

(Ceterum censeo, Trump incarcerandam esse.)