Citizens cheer with a Ukrainian soldier as a convoy of military and aid vehicles approaches the former Russian-occupied Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine.
Russo-Ukraine War: One hundred days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war has brought the world an intoxication of heart-wrenching scenes almost daily: civilian corpses in the streets of Bucha; a blown up theater in Mariupol; Chaos at the Kramatorsk train station after a Russian missile attack. These images tell one part of the overall picture of Europe’s worst armed conflict in decades. Here’s a look at some numbers and statistics that – in flux and sometimes indeterminate – shed more light on the death, destruction, displacement and economic devastation caused by war as it approaches this milestone that seems to have no end .
human toll
No one really knows how many fighters or civilians have been killed, and casualties claims by government officials – who can sometimes exaggerate or understate their figures for public relations reasons – are all to verify. Is impossible. Government officials, UN agencies and others who undertake the serious task of counting the dead do not always have access to the places where people were killed.
And Moscow has released little information about casualties among its forces and allies, and has given no account of civilian casualties in areas under its control. In some places – such as the long besieged city of Mariupol, potentially the war’s biggest killing area – Russian forces are accused of trying to cover up deaths and dump bodies into mass graves, taking the total toll on Clouds dissipate. With all those warnings, “at least tens of thousands” of Ukrainian civilians have died so far, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in remarks to Luxembourg’s parliament on Thursday. In Mariupol alone, authorities have reported more than 21,000 civilian casualties. According to the mayor, a city in the eastern region of Luhansk, which has become the epicenter of the Russian invasion, has suffered about 1,500 casualties.
Such estimates include both those killed by Russian attacks or soldiers and those who have succumbed to secondary effects such as hunger and disease due to the collapse of food supplies and health services. Zelensky said this week that 60 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers were being killed in combat every day, with about 500 more wounded. The last publicly released figures for Russia’s own forces came on March 25, when a general told state media that 1,351 soldiers were killed and 3,825 wounded. Ukraine and Western observers say the actual number is much higher: Zelensky said Thursday that more than 30,000 Russian soldiers have been killed – “more than the Soviet Union in 10 years of war in Afghanistan”; At the end of April, the British government estimated Russian losses at 15,000.
Speaking on condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss intelligence matters, a Western official said Russia was “still suffering casualties, but … in small numbers.” The official estimated that around 40,000 Russian soldiers were wounded. In Moscow-backed separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine, officials have reported that more than 1,300 fighters were killed and about 7,500 wounded in the Donetsk region, as well as 477 dead civilians and about 2,400 wounded; Also in Luhansk 29 civilians were killed and 60 were injured.
Destruction
Relentless shelling, bombing and air strikes have reduced large parts of many cities and towns to rubble. Ukraine’s Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights says Russia’s military has destroyed about 38,000 residential buildings, leaving some 220,000 people homeless. About 1,900 educational facilities, from kindergartens to grade schools to universities, have been damaged, with 180 completely ruined. Other infrastructure damages include 300 cars and 50 rail bridges, 500 factories and about 500 damaged hospitals, according to Ukrainian officials. The World Health Organization has carried out 296 attacks on hospitals, ambulances and medical workers in Ukraine this year.
running home
The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR estimates that around 6.8 million people have been evacuated from Ukraine at some point during the conflict. But as fighting in the area near Kyiv and elsewhere has subsided, and Russian forces are redeployed to the east and south, about 2.2 million have returned to the country, it says. The UN’s International Organization for Migration estimates that as of 23 May there were more than 7.1 million internally displaced people – people who fled their homes but remained in the country. This is down from more than 8 million on the earlier count.
land confiscated
Ukrainian officials say that before the February invasion, Russia controlled about 7% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and separatist-held areas in Donetsk and Luhansk. On Thursday, Zelensky said Russian forces now occupy 20% of the country. While further lines are constantly being moved, this amounts to an additional 58,000 square kilometers (22,000 sq mi) under Russian control, with a total area slightly larger than Croatia or slightly smaller than the US state of West Virginia.
economic fallout
The West has imposed a number of retaliatory sanctions against Moscow, including in critical oil and gas fields, and Europe is beginning to distance itself from its reliance on Russian energy. Evgeny Gontmakher, the academic director of the European Dialogue, wrote in a paper this week that Russia currently faces more than 5,000 targeted sanctions, more than any other country. Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves in the West have frozen about $300 billion, and air traffic in the country dropped from 8.1 million to 5.2 million between January and March, he said. Additionally, the Kyiv School of Economics has reported that more than 1,000 “self-clearing” companies have scaled down their operations in Russia.
The MOEX Russia stock index has fallen nearly a quarter from just before the attack and is down nearly 40 percent since the start of the year. And the Russian Central Bank said last week that annual inflation fell to 17.8 percent in April. Meanwhile, Ukraine is reported to have suffered a staggering economic blow: 35% of GDP was wiped out by the war. Andrey Yermak, the head of Zelensky’s office, said recently, “Our direct deficit today exceeds $600 billion.” Ukraine, a major agricultural producer, says it has been unable to export some 22 million tonnes of grain. It blames the backlog of shipments on Russian blockades or capture of major ports. Zelensky this week accused Russia of stealing at least half a million tons of grain during the invasion.
impact of war on the world
The result has spread around the world, further increasing the cost of basic goods on top of inflation that was already in full swing in many places before the invasion. Crude oil prices in London and New York have risen by 20 to 25 per cent, resulting in higher prices at the pump and for a range of petroleum-based products. Developing countries are being particularly hard squeezed by high costs of food, fuel and financing, according to economist Richard Kozul-Wright of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, disrupting the supply of wheat to African countries, which have cut shortfalls from Russia. imported 44% of its wheat. And in the years just before the Ukraine invasion. The African Development Bank has reported a 45% increase in continental prices for the grain, affecting everything from Mauritanian couscous to fried donuts sold in the Congo.
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