Why is counting the dead in Ukraine so difficult?

• Russia launched its "military operation" in Ukraine on Thursday, February 24.

  Between bombardments and armed combat, the war has already claimed many lives.

• However, it is difficult to count them: Ukraine reports more than 11,000 dead on the Russian side, while Moscow admits only 498. The UN is trying to draw up a balance sheet of civilians killed but assures that it is probably higher ".

• Behind this death count is an information war.

In Ukraine, the war is also taking place on the side of numbers.

On Sunday, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine published a new report which estimates the number of Russian soldiers killed since the start of the invasion in Ukraine at more than 11,000 dead, without however mentioning their own losses.

For its part, the Russian Ministry of Defense mentioned 2,870 dead on the Ukrainian side and 498 on the Russian side.

In the midst of this large cash gap, Western sources find it difficult to decide.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 364 civilians were killed in Ukraine.

These UN figures, updated daily, are systematically accompanied by a statement stating that they are in fact probably “considerably higher”.

Self-justify military operations

The phenomenon is not new.

During a war, "the count of the dead is always the subject of very heavy stakes", underlines the historian Isabelle Davion.

At the beginning of the conflict, the Kremlin – which aspired to a blitzkrieg – refused to recognize the invasion.

"There were no Russian deaths then since there was no war", explains Isabelle Davion, co-author of the book

.

Since then, the Russian government has changed its strategy and evokes around 500 deaths.

"No doubt because the war is lasting longer than expected and the Russian regime wants to mobilize public opinion on the issues of war in Ukraine, to fuel a discourse of hatred and revenge which would self-justify the military operations which are carried out", analyzes the historian.

By decreeing a death toll, Vladimir Putin hopes to arouse public opinion in emotion, without however implying that the Russian army is routed.

No identification plates

However, many experts estimate that around 5,000 Russian soldiers have already died in Ukraine, in less than two weeks of conflict.

Interviewed by the Quebec newspaper

La Presse, Anna Colin Lebedev, teacher-researcher in political science and specialist in post-Soviet societies, put forward the figure of “6,000 dead” on March 4.

"If these estimates are correct, it's enormous" in such a short period of time, underlines Isabelle Davion, who recalls that the Russian war in Afghanistan has caused the death of 15,000 Russian soldiers in ten years.

The identification of dead soldiers is a recurring problem for the Russian army.

In order to minimize the losses, the government regularly speaks of “deserters” or “disappeared”, a deep pain for the families of the killed, knowing that the soldiers are not equipped with identification plates.

Even more cynically, Moscow has already used mobile crematoriums during the Donbass war.

The bodies are not identified (no military plate) and the soldiers are declared missing or deserters, which is an unbearable pain for the parents.

This attitude of the Russian army is found in the conflicts which followed: 2nd war in Tch, Georgia.

5/13

— Anna Colin Lebedev (@colinlebedev) February 27, 2022

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“

 Troubleshooting

of reality”

Aware of this phenomenon, the Ukrainian authorities are trying to mobilize Russian opinion by providing information on captured or killed soldiers.

They created the 200rf.com site, already blocked in Russia but accessible via certain encrypted messengers such as Telegram.

However, the figures communicated by Kiev should also be taken with caution.

“There is a war of image, a war of information between the two governments as is always the case in times of war, but we cannot send them back to back because there is a real travesty of reality on the Russian side which puts the alteration of the truth on a different scale”, nuance Isabelle Davion.

The instrumentalization of the death toll is also a more important issue for Moscow, which has a more powerful army and was hoping for a quick victory.

A “materially” difficult count

Beyond the war of numbers, counting the dead is a difficult task.

Establishing the number of victims when a building collapses under a bombardment is not an easy thing, especially when the war is raging.

The deputy mayor of Mariupol, Sergei Orlov, explained on France 24 on Sunday: “We cannot even pick up the bodies lying in the streets of the city because the Russian army is constantly bombarding”.

"Materially, it's a difficult task", confirms the lecturer at Sorbonne-University who recalls that, even after decades of research, the dead of the Second World War oscillate between 50 and 60 million, the margin of error being therefore ten million human lives.

Not to mention the difficulty of qualifying a "death of war".

“A Ukrainian who dies of cancer because he no longer has access to treatment or of a heart attack because of the bombardments, is that a war death?

», Illustrates Isabelle Davion.

Our file on the war in Ukraine

The balance sheet should however clear up after the conflict, over the long term.

"In times of war, nowadays, we try to keep a count on the spot, but once the remoteness of the events, the research makes it possible to have an increasingly precise count", explains the historian who specifies that 'we are then no longer in an emergency situation.

Because if the dead are an essential issue of the war in Ukraine, on the ground, the priority obviously remains the living.

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• Russia

• War in Ukraine

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• Vladimir Poutine

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