While the Ukrainian conflict has entered a new phase since November 5, the date of the election of Donald Trump as head of the United States, the sustainability of Moscow's war effort against kyiv is the subject of all attentions. If the Kremlin has completely reoriented its economy in the service of its defense industry, in order to ensure its military endurance, particularly in terms of munitions, it is a resource of which Russia – like Ukraine – is still struggling to ensure continuity, it is that of the fighters. A pressure contributing to the outbidding of Russian President Vladimir Putin, observers worry.
“Since the start of the war in Ukraine, time has been on Russia’s side. Moscow has a larger population than kyiv, a larger economy. In a war of attrition, this matters”summarizes Joris Van Bladel, specialist in Russian military affairs and senior associate at the Egmont Institute, in Belgium. “But Russia does not have unlimited resources either. So, we are also currently witnessing competition in the management of temps »underlines Mr. Van Bladel, author of a forthcoming book in February 2025, titled Land of the Great Dying. How Russia Defies Western Logic (“the land of great sacrifices. How Russia defies Western logic”, Prometheus, untranslated).
On both the Russian and Ukrainian sides, the number of dead and injured is an extremely sensitive subject, and no precise figures have ever been released. But, according to a study published in November by the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), these so-called “irreversible” losses, that is to say the dead, the missing and the seriously injured, continue to increase. 'increase. Between March 2022 and October 2023, Russian losses would have increased from 231 per day to more of 600, more than double. And, since November 2023, they are approaching a thousand per day, according to Yuri Fedorov, author of the IFRI study built from cross-checking of open source data. On Wednesday December 4, Anna Tsiviliova, Russian Deputy Defense Minister, announced that the ministry had carried out 48,000 DNA tests to identify missing soldiers.
-The Institute for the Study of War, an American think tank that follows the conflict on a day-to-day basis, reported on Tuesday, December 3, more than 1,700 casualties per day, with a total of more than 600,000 dead and wounded since the start of the war. Of these overall estimates, as of November 22, only the figure of 79,819 dead Russian soldiers could however be formally cross-checked by the Russian opposition site Mediazona, which, in collaboration with the BBC, maintains a verified list of names of soldiers who died at the front. A figure which, according to those who publish it, is about half the real number.
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