The russian military claimed only about 600 killed until Jan. 25, then suddenly increased this number first to 900+ and then to 1,173, stating the number of wounded as 3,500. Although these new numbers still look far from reality, they confirm that the russian military has lied about their losses. On no single day was there a report of more than 10 troops killed, and usually it was only about 5. However, to reach the new number of 1,173 starting from 465 stated on January 7, 2000, russian forces must have been losing 37 troops daily since January 7, 2000. Once we cannot trust the russian official statistics we are bound to trust alternative reports more.
There are three alternative reports of the russian losses:
-
The Chechen official website states that about 11,000 (Jan. 26, 2000) Russian troops have been killed since the war started.
-
The Russian Mothers' Committee estimated in mid-January that about 3,000 russian troops have been killed. Upon renewed data from the Russian military, the committee stated that the number of killed is probably 2.5-3 times, and the number of wounded 2 times higher than the new official data; that is, that is that about 3,500 had been killed and about 7,000 had been wounded.
-
The independent Russian NTV station on January 25 reported an estimate of 5,000.
Although it's really difficult to estimate Russian losses some efforts can be made to circumvent doubtful official statistics. In this direction, let's consider the statement on Jan.24 of Igor Nikolayev, the military commisioners officer of Tatarstan, a semi-sovereign region of the Russian Fed. He said that 18 privates and 3 officers recruited from Tatarstan has been killed in Chechnya, while 500 recruits and 101 professinal (contract) soldiers are currently serving in Chechnya.(click here to see Radio Liberty's report on it, choose January 24 and scroll till the middle).
Let's calculate the percentage of the military recruited from Tatarstan that has been killed (as of Jan.24): 21/601=3.5%. We can assume that this percentage is about the same for all other 88 russian regions, because it would be ungrounded to think that Tatarstanis are appointed into much more dangerous positions than those from other regions. If that were the case, it might distabilize situation in Tatarstan. At the same time, the russian military withdrew, at least officially, all Tatarstani new-comer recruiters in early Dec. 1999, upon Tatarstani parliament's controvercial decision that new-comer recruiters not be sent to Chechnya. This also means that actually percentage for Tatarstani recruiters might be lower than in other regions, all of which send freshmen recruiters.
Moreover, this percentage is likely to be underestimated because since russian military understaes the death toll of russian troops, Tatarstani branch is also likely to understate the actual death toll.
Still, let's move from this starting point. Given that we are justified in assuming approximately the same percentage of dead for all russian regions (actually it might be even higher), we reach the following equation:
If there are 100,000 russian troops in Chechnya, then the approximate death toll (as of Jan. 24) is=
100,000*3.5%=3,500 (THREE THOUSAND AND FIVE HUNDRED).
This number is already large enough, however, one more variable should be considered-the allegedly 250,000-strong Interior Ministry troops in Chechnya. Let's assume that the percentage of those killed for the Interior Ministry is twice as low as of that for the military, namely 1.75%. In this case the approximate losses of the Interior Ministry are 250,000*1.75%=4,375 (FOUR THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE).
Thus total russian losses sum up to about 7,875, that is almost SEVEN THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED.
This number might seem incredible, but besides the logic used before the calculations, it's to some extent supported by the average of the three alternative reports, which is 6,500.
However, the story doesn't end here. The russian military usually report 2-3 times more wounded than dead. Let's assume 2 times more are wounded, then the total number of wounded since the war started is about 7,875*2=15,750.
This puts the total debilitation of the russian army at about 23,625. Well, this figure seems to be absolutely incredible, and maybe we shouldn't assume as much as 15,750 wounded, but still it might point at what the potential losses may turn out to have been.
Whatever the number of wounded, we are left with the death toll of about between 3,000 and 10,000, with high porbability that the estimate of 7,875 is close to reality. In any case, the number of 3,000 seems to constitute the bottom line of the total loss.
No wonder the russian military hides such data from the public. This war appears to be much more costly than Afghanistan.
Now, the serious clashes started only in mid-October. Until January 24 (the date of the report referred to in the beginning of the article) 100 days had passed. Therefore, on average about 78 russian troops appear to be dying daily in the Chechen war.
If we assume that the war continues until March 26, 4,680 (60*78=4,680) russian troops more are likely to die, with those likely to be wounded even more dificult to estimate.
Russia should start negotiations before too late. The cost for Chechens, on the other hand, can hardly be described by words. There is no winner in this war, save for some dirty politicians.
feedback
HOME