Russia and Ukraine overestimate other side’s deaths, says study

The study uses a new statistical model to estimate conflict deaths. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Russia clearly underestimates the losses of its own soldiers in its war against Ukraine, according to an international study with Swiss participation.

Nearly five times as many Russians as Ukrainians have died in the first year following Russia’s invasion of its neighbour on February 24, 2022, according to the study publishedExternal link in the latest edition of the specialist journal “Pnas Political Science”.

Some 76,700 Russian servicemen were killed during the first year of the war, compared with around 17,200 Ukrainian soldiers, it estimates. For each Russian soldier killed, Russian sources reported only 0.3 casualties, whereas for each Ukrainian soldier killed, the same sources reported 4.3 casualties.

Ukrainian sources also overestimated the number of deaths on the other side, announcing almost twice as many deaths as the estimate in the study, which uses a new statistical model. However, the authors found no evidence of systematic distortion in the Ukrainian reports of their own military deaths.

“We have tried to estimate the correct numbers from the limited information that is available,” Niklas Stoehr of the Swiss Federal Technology Institute ETH Zurich told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Tuesday.

In collaboration with researchers at the University of North Carolina and the University of Chicago in the US, he has developed a model that can estimate losses during conflicts. In total, the researchers processed 4,609 reports on civilian casualties and fallen soldiers in Ukraine on social media, in news and from government sources.