Triumphant bulletins

Judging by the Defence Ministry’s statements released in the beginning of March 2022 and the 25 March speech by First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces, Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, by that point, the Russian army had already achieved “impressive success”. This is what the official statements said:

• 90% of Ukrainian military airfields were disabled;
• the majority of combat aircraft and helicopters and air defence systems were destroyed. The air defence systems were reported to be “only focal”;
• more than 90% of the long and medium-range anti-aircraft missile systems in service were destroyed;
• storage bases were destroyed, they contained up to 70% of all military equipment stored by Ukraine.

By the end of March 2022, Russia had occupied over a fourth of Ukraine’s territory. Western military aid was only being discussed at that point. In this context, Ukraine losing the majority of its military hardware of all types should have made for a quick Russian victory.

But something did not go according to plan. In the next months, Ukraine was able to completely liberate the Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions, recapture a big part of the Kharkiv region, conduct a successful counteroffensive in the Kherson region, and take back the city of Lyman. What equipment was Ukraine using all that time then?

Things got even more interesting when we compared the Russian General Staff’s data on the initial number of Ukraine’s military equipment with its own data on arms supplies and the Russian Defence Ministry’s bulletins on destroyed Ukrainian military hardware.

According to the Defence Ministry, by 25 March 2022 Ukraine had lost its fleet and had been left with 10% of its aviation and a third of its initial number of tanks and other armoured vehicles. But as of 22 December 2022, the situation seemed genuinely absurd: Ukraine’s Armed Forces ended up with a negative number of all main types of arms featured in the report.

There are other cases of clear falsification of data by the Defence Ministry: for example, by 8 December 2022 Russia had allegedly destroyed 44 HIMARS, although by that point NATO countries had only provided Ukraine with 35 HIMARS and similar systems in total. Furthermore, there still has been no convincing proof of Russia destroying even one HIMARS.

Oryx, a defence analysis and warfare research website, provides many examples of dubious statements and disinformation by Russian officials.

In particular, as of 21 May 2023, Russia claims to have “destroyed” 175 M777 howitzers (destruction of only 31 has been confirmed), 428 planes (only 66 confirmed), and 234 helicopters (only 29 confirmed).

When it comes to 1,000 Bayraktar TB2 drones, all allegedly destroyed by June 2022, there is data confirming destruction of only 17. Furthermore, Baykar Tech itself produced no more than 450 drones.

The Defence Ministry has not made any big summary statements about the success of “demilitarisation” since the end of 2022. The numbers provided by the ministry on “destroyed” Ukrainian military hardware have barely changed from month to month. Instead, the daily bulletins are now full of secondary details: where a drone was shot down, what tactical manoeuvre was used to destroy the enemy’s infantry fighting vehicles, etc.

Can real losses be counted?

Ukraine does not post official data on destroyed military equipment. The Oryx project estimates Ukraine’s total losses at 3,592 units of military hardware, a number almost ten times lower than the one Russia claims.

Oryx’s data is not complete: analysts take into account only proven cases, with photo or video confirmation, so the exact number of destroyed military equipment could be higher. Still, as of today, Oryx is considered the most credible source on the topic.

According to the estimates by military expert Kirill Mikhaylov, around 70% of the actual number of lost hardware ends up in Oryx’s database.

According to Mikhaylov, discrepancies between the data provided by independent analysts and official bulletins reported by the sides of a military conflict are inescapable. One reason for them could be the “commanders’ optimism”.

“If a shell blows up near military equipment, it could be considered destroyed, although it is in fact only damaged. Clearly, commanders at every level have an incentive to exaggerate their reports this way, and thus the enemy’s losses could end up greater on paper than what they actually are. But the data published by Russia’s Defence Ministry is just straight up lies, there’s no other way to explain [these discrepancies],” says the expert.

Even some Russian “hawks” have talked about the implausibility of the data shared by the Defence Ministry. Here is what founder of PMC Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been in a direct conflict with Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu for a long time, said about the official bulletins:

“Judging by what is written in them, we will soon advance on aliens — with such losses <...> So, I think that this is just wild science fiction. Actually, we need to add up all the numbers shared by [Igor] Konashenkov (the official spokesperson of Russia’s Ministry of Defence — editor’s note). I think that we’ve already destroyed the Earth five times over.”

The official Ukrainian data also does not match up Oryx’s estimates when it comes to Russian losses. But the situation is not symmetrical — the number of discrepancies in the Ukrainian data is much lower than in Russia’s reports.

‘Russian lend-lease’

Capturing the enemy’s military equipment during warfare is a normal occurrence in any war, but the scope of it is so big this time around that the phenomenon has even received its own name — “Russian lend-lease”.

By autumn 2022, Ukraine had been able to capture more units of Russian heavy weaponry than it had received from the allies at that point. Russian “goodwill gestures”, “regroupings”, and “withdrawing to more advantageous positions” paid off brilliantly for Ukraine: during those manoeuvres, the Russian army left behind a significant number of military hardware, including units that worked perfectly fine or had small defects.

The trophies included, in particular, an entire tank company, a rare radar station, and a bunch of drones with documentation.

According to Oryx, almost a third of heavy weaponry lost by Russia in Ukraine ended up seized by the Ukrainian army. The forced exchange of military equipment goes both ways, however Russia definitely has fewer prizes to show for it — Ukraine has gained thrice as many units of equipment.

According to specialists, some of the reasons for the high number of Russian losses are logistics problems and servicemen’s incompetence: tanks are often abandoned just because they ran out of fuel, got stuck in the mud, or operators lost control of the vehicle. Sometimes, “regroupings” happen in such a hurry that the hardware is just left behind.

The opposite of ‘demilitarisation’

Per the Global Firepower ranking compiled based on a number of parameters, 2022 listed Russia as the second military power in the world and Ukraine as the 22nd. By the start of this year, Ukraine had reached the 15th spot — the “demilitarisation” started by Russia has significantly increased Ukraine’s military power (and, it seems, it’ll keep increasing).

The interesting thing is that Russia has kept its second place on the list, however now there’s a note stating: “The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War has showcased key limitations in Russian military capabilities despite its quantitative manpower and material advantage over neighboring Ukraine — shedding light on preparedness, leadership, training, and supply issues.” So, there’s still money, but it doesn’t solve all problems.

Military expert Yury Fyodorov notes that the ranking takes into account only quantitative indicators, including military hardware that is stored in depots and is often unusable. And while Ukraine is receiving modern high-precision weapons from its Western allies, Russia is mostly ending up with Soviet or poorly upgraded equipment at its disposal. Russia’s military partners are Belarus, Iran, and North Korea.

“Modern tanks and infantry fighting vehicles are a big advantage. With constant discussions about the tanks, people start to forget how important infantry vehicle supply is: for example, Bradley, Marder, or Sweden’s CV90 significantly increase and expand an infantry’s capabilities. This rearmament played quite an important role, and we will soon see these new trained brigades during the counteroffensive,” says Mikhaylov.

There are new significant capabilities when it comes to long-range weapons too. These are MLRS, HIMARS, and Storm Shadow — they allow Ukraine’s army to hit targets located at a way farther distance than before. These capabilities are still not equal to those of Russia, which is able to strike missiles across almost the entire territory of Ukraine, but still it’s quite a response, notes Mikhaylov.

Comparing the data on the military hardware that Ukraine’s Armed Forces had at the start of 2022 shared by The Military Balance with the Oryx data on Ukraine’s losses, war trophies, and arms supplies, we see that there is no “demilitarisation” happening: Ukraine now has more weapons than before the invasion.

All of this doesn’t change the fact that the size of the Ukrainian army has increased significantly since the start of the full-scale invasion, however the military equipment numbers have not increased with the same speed. Furthermore, the Ukrainian Armed Forces did suffer severe arms and ammunition losses.

Ukraine is actively trying to tackle this problem through Western supplies, personnel training in order to use new hardware, and improvement of older models. But Ukraine’s army still doesn’t have enough of certain types of weapons.

“The current supplies are still not enough,” speculates Fyodorov. “But in general, Ukraine is now in a better position when it comes to arms than it was at the moment the war began.”