How heavy are Russian casualties in Ukraine?

The average war since 1816 has seen around 50 battlefield deaths a day. Russia’s war in Ukraine is much bloodier. In recent days Bill Burns, the director of the cia, Richard Moore, the chief of mI6, and Mikk Marran, the head of Estonia’s foreign intelligence service, have all said that around 15,000 Russians have died since February 24th—an average rate of more than 100 per day. Ukrainian officials say that, recently, their own casualty rate has been similar, and at times much worse. “My expectation is that the war will exceed the deadliness of other large non-world war European wars, like the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War,” says Paul Poast of the University of Chicago. But how are casualty figures estimated?

Military casualties are divided into two main categories: killed in action (kia) and wounded in action (wia), some of whom die later. Those who are captured and taken as prisoners-of-war and those who go missing are counted separately. Some estimates of Russian casualties in Ukraine cover only army personnel. Others include forces from the Rosgvardiya (national guard), fsb (the main successor to the kgb) and other non-army regulars, like the vdv airborne forces that were decimated in the first phase of the conflict. And some take in fighters from Russian-backed militias in the Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics—a pair of puppet governments in eastern Ukraine—which have conscripted large numbers of local residents. These, alongside Russian mercenaries, have done much of the hard fighting in recent months.