2022.03.17 俄罗斯士兵在乌克兰的死亡率似乎非常高

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Russian soldiers appear to be dying in Ukraine at a remarkably high rate
Casualties in the early weeks far exceed the tolls in other recent conflicts
Mar 17th 2022


In august 2014 Major General Harold Greene was assassinated at a training facility outside Kabul. He was the first American general killed in combat since the Vietnam war, four decades earlier. Deaths of high-ranking military officers are rare, since they tend to avoid getting dangerously close to the front line (they typically do so only when their troops are in trouble). Yet in the three weeks of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, four Russian major-generals have been slain; there are thought to be only 20 or so in the theatre. In fact, Russia seems to have been losing soldiers of all ranks at an astonishing rate.

Estimates of the number of fallen soldiers in Ukraine are hazy. Mr Putin, still claiming that his “special military operation” is going to plan, has good reason to understate its human cost. By March 2nd after a week of war, 498 of his soldiers had died in combat, according to official Russian tallies. But the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency (dia) has put the count at between 2,000 and 4,000 in the war’s first 11 days. (The New York Times reports that the American estimate has since risen to more than 7,000.)

The dia had only low confidence in this estimate; working out casualties from images and fragmentary intelligence is hard. Even so, this number of deaths so early on in the war is striking. The lower bound of the dia’s estimate is already greater than the number of Soviet soldiers who died in the first year of the Afghanistan war that began in 1979. It exceeds the number of military casualties America suffered in the first 11 years of its own Afghan campaign, which started in 2001, and the first two years in Iraq, from 2003. It is roughly equivalent to the number of Russian soldiers lost in the first year of the brutal second Chechen war of 1999-2009. According to human-rights organisations, that war claimed a total of 5,500 Russian soldiers’ lives in a decade. The toll in Ukraine seems to be approaching that sum in mere weeks, if it has not already exceeded it.

Shocking as they are, these losses make little dent in Russia’s armed forces. Before the war, Russia had 900,000 active soldiers and 2m reserves. At most the dia’s death toll in Ukraine so far accounts for just 0.4% of its active fighters. But it is a far larger proportion of the Russian fighting force in the country, and an even larger number of troops are likely to have been wounded—perhaps ten times as many, if recent trends hold. All that will be doing little to boost their low morale.



每日图表
俄罗斯士兵在乌克兰的死亡率似乎非常高
最初几周的伤亡人数远远超过近期其他冲突的伤亡人数
2022年3月17日



2014年8月，哈罗德-格林少将在喀布尔外的一个训练设施被暗杀。他是自四十年前的越南战争以来第一位在战斗中丧生的美国将军。高级军官的死亡是罕见的，因为他们往往避免危险地接近前线（他们通常只在其部队遇到麻烦时才这样做）。然而，在弗拉基米尔-普京的乌克兰战争的三个星期里，有四名俄罗斯少将被杀；据认为在战区只有20名左右。事实上，俄罗斯似乎一直在以惊人的速度损失所有级别的士兵。

对乌克兰境内阵亡士兵人数的估计是模糊的。普京先生仍然声称他的 "特别军事行动 "正在按计划进行，他有充分理由低估其人力成本。根据俄罗斯官方的统计数字，到3月2日，经过一周的战争，他的士兵中有498人在战斗中死亡。但五角大楼的国防情报局（dia）认为，在战争的前11天，人数在2000至4000人之间。(纽约时报》报道说，美国的估计数字后来上升到7000多人。）

国防部对这一估计只有很低的信心；从图像和零散的情报中计算出伤亡人数是很难的。即便如此，在战争初期的这一死亡人数还是令人震惊。国防部估计的下限已经超过了1979年开始的阿富汗战争第一年中死亡的苏联士兵人数。它超过了美国在2001年开始的阿富汗战争的前11年和2003年开始的伊拉克战争的前两年中遭受的军事伤亡人数。它大致相当于1999-2009年残酷的第二次车臣战争第一年中损失的俄罗斯士兵人数。据人权组织称，那场战争在十年内共夺走了5500名俄罗斯士兵的生命。乌克兰的死亡人数如果还没有超过这个数字，那么在短短几周内似乎就会接近这个数字。

尽管令人震惊，但这些损失对俄罗斯的武装力量没有什么影响。战前，俄罗斯有90万现役士兵和200万预备役。迄今为止，俄罗斯在乌克兰的死亡人数最多只占其现役士兵的0.4%。但这在俄罗斯在该国的作战部队中占的比例要大得多，而且可能有更多的部队受伤--如果最近的趋势保持不变，也许是十倍之多。所有这些对提高他们低落的士气没有什么作用。