An interesting article from Forbes: Russian Combat Medals
Forbes articles tend to be pretty negative on Russia, but it is no secret that Russia had moved into Ukraine its troops, or its contractors, or Russian volunteers (a word that has had interesting connotations in Soviet history).
A few points:
- According to one source, 167 regular troops killed, 187 MIA (missing in action), with 305 mercenaries killed and 796 MIA. Most MIA are likely KIA. So maybe 1,455 Russians killed in fighting in Ukraine. I gather this is a pretty reliable listing of people.
- Society of Russian Mothers (this organization has been around for a while) says up to 3,500 KIA.
- Malaysian airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a BUK missile system operated by a Russian crew (is there really any other reasonable interpretation of this event?).
- 4,300 medals awarded “For Distinction in Combat” between 11 July 2014 and February 2016, over 10,000 medals for bravery awarded.
- If there are five troops per every one that receives a medal, then one could guesstimate 50,000 Russian troops having served in Ukraine between July 2014 and February 2016.
Anyhow, I have not checked all the various estimates on Russian intervention in Ukraine, and compared and contrasted them, so no sense of how accurate this is. I do note that this is 1,455 killed out of 50,000 involved or almost 3%. This is pretty high. When you add in wounded then you are looking an overall casualty figure that may be as high as 10,000. Of course, the “tooth-to-tail” ratio is very skewed, as most of the support troops would be just across the border in Russia. Anyone have better estimates?
Bellingcat made a report on the medals/count:
https://www.bellingcat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/RussiasWarinUkraine_TheMedals_and_TreacherousNumbers-4.pdf
Thanks. This was the source for some of the data in the article.