It's Time To Be Honest About The Death Toll In Ukraine

by Branko Marcetic, Responsible Statecraft

“Ukraine will win.” Some variation of this has become the unofficial mantra of U.S. policy toward the Ukraine war, asserted in countless columns, interviews and speeches, ones often pledging open-ended U.S. commitment to the Ukrainian war effort and chiding policymakers for not sending greater quantities and more escalatory types of weapons.

It was partly on this basis, in fact — that with enough support, Ukraine could militarily defeat a Russia weaker than many thought — that then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly urged against peace talks early in the war.

Burial of the remains of 13 unidentified and two identified people who were killed in the Bucha district during the Russian occupation

This attitude has been bolstered by the unconfirmed information that’s trickled out publicly about the significant damage inflicted on the Russian military. Besides the disastrous loss of equipment — including half of its usable tanks and as much as 8 percent of its active tactical combat aircraft, by one estimate — the consensus among Western officials about Russian casualties seems to have settled on a staggering 200,000, with more killed than in all of its other post-World War II conflicts combined.