LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Nine months into a war that was met with a raft of sanctions aimed at punishing Russia’s economy, Russia has announced a 2023 defense budget that comes in at $84 billion, more than 40 percent higher than originally planned. Adding in spending for security operations, which are counted separately (such as policing the newly annexed territories in Ukraine), the total rises to nearly $160 billion for 2023.

These may be necessary outlays, given the prospects for a long and drawn-out war in Ukraine that has not gone well from the Russian perspective. But it will no doubt punish ordinary Russians, given that the overall economy is forecast to contract by 3.6 percent this year and 3 percent next year, according to the recently published Bloomberg consensus forecast.

The Kremlin may find solace in the fact that Russia has weathered the sanctions better than most expected; it’s one more surprise in a war that has upended many expectations — the poor performance of the Russian army and the unity of NATO, to name two significant examples.

But experts expect the bite of sanctions to worsen — and that makes these figures potentially problematic for the Russian economy and for ordinary Russians as well

Meanwhile, some notes for perspective: While the $160 billion figure represents a spike in costs for Russia, other global powers spend considerably more on defense. A study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the most recent estimate for China’s military budget at between $229-293 billion. The U.S. figure for 2023: $858 billion.

We offer a more comprehensive set of data points on the war in Ukraine below. Grid originally published this document on March 24, the one-month anniversary of the war. We update it every Thursday to provide a fuller picture of the conflict.

Civilians killed: at least 6,700 (probably thousands more)

On June 7, a Ukrainian official said at least 40,000 Ukrainian civilians had been killed or wounded since the war began. The official offered no breakdown of dead versus wounded civilians. The United Nations’ latest estimate of civilians killed is more than 6,700, but it consistently notes the figure is an underestimate, as is its estimate of total casualties — a combination of deaths and injuries — given as more than 17,000. (Updated Dec. 7; source, source, source.)

Ukrainian soldiers killed: at least 13,000

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, estimated in early December that 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the war began; in late August, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s commander in chief, said the country had lost about 9,000 troops. In early November, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, estimated that both sides had about 100,000 soldiers killed or injured. (Updated Dec. 7; source, source.)

Russian soldiers killed: 5,937 to more than 92,000

From the early days of the war, casualty counts for Russian soldiers have varied widely — depending on the source. Ukraine raised its estimate of Russian soldiers killed in the conflict to more than 92,000 on Wednesday. These numbers have been updated frequently through the Facebook page for the country’s General Staff of the Armed Forces. In its first update on casualties since March, Russia claimed in late September that there had been 5,937 Russian military deaths. Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov said in April that there had been “significant losses of troops, and it’s a huge tragedy for us.”

Russia has also suffered a high rate of casualties among senior officers. Thirteen Russian generals have been killed, according to Ukrainian authorities; the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency puts the figure at between eight and 10. Grid’s Tom Nagorski and Joshua Keating previously reported on the possible explanations for this “inconceivable” toll: poor communications and command-and-control structures within the Russian military. (Updated Dec. 7; source.)

Total displaced Ukrainians: more than 14 million

There are more than 7.9 million Ukrainian refugees currently reported in other European countries. United Nations data indicates more than 15 million Ukrainians have crossed the border since the start of the war, but millions have returned home, largely from Poland, as Nikhil Kumar and Kseniia Lisnycha reported. In late October, the International Organization for Migration’s latest survey of internally displaced Ukrainians found more Ukrainians returning home from within Ukraine, but 6.5 million remained displaced within their own country. (Updated Dec. 7; source; source.)