Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Those are valid points. The claim of a ratio of 1:9 is still rather suspicious.
Sure, I get that, but I am genuinely curious in what you would consider a non-suspicious ratio.
For example / my frame of reference, in WW1 there were nearly 8 million military killed/missing, and 22 million wounded. The overall war's killed/wounded ratio at that rate is 1:2.75. Call it 1:3 for simplicity's sake. This is a war of major offensives on both fronts in both directions, of which one- the eastern front- was considerably different than the western front's relatively static trench warfare.
On the Western Front in particular, according to wiki the ratio is similar. About 3.5 million killed out of 13 million total casualties (meaning 3.5:9.5 K/W) - roughly 1:2.71- again rounds to 1:3 as a nice round number. This is roughly the same (1:2.7X) ratio on both sides- but maybe this is because both conducted roughly even spreads of offense versus defense, or maybe not.
But of the 13 million casualties (killed and wounded) on the Western Front for the entire war, nearly 1 million of that was in the Battle of the Somme alone. And while the Battle of the Somme was a 4-month campaign on one specific front, on the first day- when the attack was unidirectional- the British suffered about 55.5 thousand casualties, of which about 19.2k were killed.
Which is to say, on the offense in a trench warfare context, the British suffered a 1:2.9 killed/wounded ratio. Or, again, 1:3.
So on our historical 'this is a trench and artillery war' comparison, the attacking power can reasonably into prepared defenses can get a 1:3 military K/W rate.
I think we can fairly reasonably guess that the Ukrainians have not, as a trend, been suffering casualties comparable to the ratios of Battle of the Somme attacks.
So I am curious- and not trying to belittle!- what you would consider a non-suspicious baseline. I can fully agree that 1:9 is eye-brow-raisingly high. But what is your 'gut' of what it 'reasonably' would be? Was it 1:3, before this? Would it be 1:5?
I am sincerely interested in your thoughts, because I want to know.
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