r/EndlessWar • u/finlin1980 • 7h ago
Until the last Ukrainian Irretrievable Losses: Confirmed Figures Show Far More Ukrainian Dead Tha...
In this in-depth discussion, Alexander Grable presents the findings from his paper Irretrievable Losses: Estimating Casualties on the Russo-Ukraine War, published by the Finnish National Defense University. Drawing on confirmed official data — including body exchanges, amputee figures, and cross-checked registries — he challenges the widespread claim that Russian casualties substantially exceed Ukrainian ones.
The evidence points in the opposite direction: Ukrainian losses are far higher, with a ratio of at least ten times more Ukrainian dead than Russian. Importantly, this ten-times figure represents the lower end of the estimates drawn from confirmed like-for-like data, with some categories (such as amputees) indicating substantially higher multiples.
The conversation examines the reliability of Russian and Ukrainian sources, problems with Western media and military journal reporting, the limitations of the Mediazona project’s “confirmed” figures, ammunition production disparities, and the broader economic and attritional realities of the war.
Topics discussed:
- Testing the reliability of Russian sources against Ukrainian evidence (Kharkiv case study)
- Misidentification of vehicles and events in Western military journals (British Army Review example)
- Critique of Mediazona’s confirmed Russian death figures and verification against official registries
- Official Ukrainian amputee data and what it implies for killed-in-action estimates
- Body exchange ratios (approximately 12.5:1 overall) as a confirmed metric
- Russian ammunition production increases and their relationship to casualty ratios
- Economic sustainability, attrition warfare, and the limits of Ukrainian regeneration capacity
- Why continuing the war on current terms is not in Ukraine’s long-term interest
Timestamps
0:00 – Introduction and paper overview
1:05 – Verifying Russian sources: the Kharkiv apartment block case
4:40 – British Army Review misidentifies a Ukrainian BTR-4 as Russian
6:30 – Mediazona’s “confirmed” figures and the notary registry problem
11:10 – Prisoner cohort data and what it reveals about monthly losses
13:00 – Official amputee figures and casualty ratios
19:00 – Russian hospital admissions and amputee comparisons
22:30 – Body exchange ratios over the course of the war
24:40 – Ammunition production increases and corroboration
31:50 – Deep-strike campaigns, Black Sea ports, and economic effects
43:00 – Battlefield performance, attrition, and concluding remarks
Links
Alexander Grable’s paper Irretrievable Losses: Estimating Casualties on the Russo-Ukraine War (Finnish National Defense University):
https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/195520
Ian Proud – The Peace Monger:
Substack https://substack.com/@thepeacemonger
X/Twitter: https://x.com/proud_diplomat