At 100 Days, Russia-Ukraine War by the Numbers

A view of the city of Mariupol on June 2, 2022, amid the ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine. (AFP)
A view of the city of Mariupol on June 2, 2022, amid the ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine. (AFP)
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At 100 Days, Russia-Ukraine War by the Numbers

A view of the city of Mariupol on June 2, 2022, amid the ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine. (AFP)
A view of the city of Mariupol on June 2, 2022, amid the ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine. (AFP)

One hundred days into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the war has brought the world a near-daily drumbeat of gut wrenching scenes: Civilian corpses in the streets of Bucha; a blown-up theater in Mariupol; the chaos at a Kramatorsk train station in the wake of a Russian missile strike.

Those images tell just a part of the overall picture of Europe's worst armed conflict in decades. Here's a look at some numbers and statistics that - while in flux and at times uncertain - shed further light on the death, destruction, displacement and economic havoc wrought by the war as it reaches this milestone with no end in sight.

The human toll
Nobody really knows how many combatants or civilians have died, and claims of casualties by government officials - who may sometimes be exaggerating or low-balling their figures for public relations reasons - are all but impossible to verify.

Government officials, UN agencies and others who carry out the grim task of counting the dead don't always get access to places where people were killed.

And Moscow has released scant information about casualties among its forces and allies, and given no accounting of civilian deaths in areas under its control. In some places - such as the long-besieged city of Mariupol, potentially the war's biggest killing field - Russian forces are accused of trying to cover up deaths and dumping bodies into mass graves, clouding the overall toll.

With all those caveats, "at least tens of thousands" of Ukrainian civilians have died so far, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday in comments to Luxembourg's parliament.

In Mariupol alone, officials have reported over 21,000 civilian dead. Sievierodonetsk, a city in the eastern region of Luhansk that has become the focus of Russia’s offensive, has seen roughly 1,500 casualties, according to the mayor.

Such estimates comprise both those killed by Russian strikes or troops and those who succumbed to secondary effects such as hunger and sickness as food supplies and health services collapsed.

Zelenskyy said this week that 60 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are dying in combat every day, with about 500 more wounded.

Russia's last publicly released figures for its own forces came March 25, when a general told state media that 1,351 soldiers had been killed and 3,825 wounded.

Ukraine and Western observers say the real number is much higher: Zelenskyy said Thursday that more than 30,000 Russian servicemen have died - "more than the Soviet Union lost in 10 years of the war in Afghanistan"; in late April, the British government estimated Russian losses at 15,000.

Speaking on condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss intelligence matters, a Western official said Russia is "still taking casualties, but ... in smaller numbers." The official estimated that some 40,000 Russian troops have been wounded.

In Moscow-backed separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine, authorities have reported over 1,300 fighters lost and nearly 7,500 wounded in the Donetsk region, along with 477 dead civilians and nearly 2,400 wounded; plus 29 civilians killed and 60 wounded in Luhansk.

The devastation
Relentless shelling, bombing and airstrikes have reduced large swaths of many cities and towns to rubble.

Ukraine’s parliamentary commission on human rights says Russia's military has destroyed almost 38,000 residential buildings, rendering about 220,000 people homeless.

Nearly 1,900 educational facilities from kindergartens to grade schools to universities have been damaged, including 180 completely ruined.

Other infrastructure losses include 300 car and 50 rail bridges, 500 factories and about 500 damaged hospitals, according to Ukrainian officials.

The World Health Organization has tallied 296 attacks on hospitals, ambulances and medical workers in Ukraine this year.

Fleeing home
The UN refugee agency UNHCR estimates that about 6.8 million people have been driven out of Ukraine at some point during the conflict.

But since fighting subsided in the area near Kyiv and elsewhere, and Russian forces redeployed to the east and south, about 2.2 million have returned to the country, it says.

The UN's International Organization for Migration estimates that as of May 23 there were more than 7.1 million internally displaced people - that is, those who fled their homes but remain in the country. That's down from over 8 million in an earlier count.

Land seized
Ukrainian officials say that before the February invasion, Russia controlled some 7% of Ukrainian territory including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and areas held by the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy said Russian forces now held 20% of the country.

While the front lines are constantly shifting, that amounts to an additional 58,000 square kilometers (22,000 square miles) under Russian control, a total area slightly larger than Croatia or a little smaller than the US state of West Virginia.

The economic fallout in Russia and Ukraine ...
The West has levied a host of retaliatory sanctions against Moscow including on the crucial oil and gas sectors, and Europe is beginning to wean itself from its dependence on Russian energy.

Evgeny Gontmakher, academic director of European Dialogue, wrote in a paper this week that Russia currently faces over 5,000 targeted sanctions, more than any other country. Some $300 billion of Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves in the West have been frozen, he added, and air traffic in the country dropped from 8.1 million to 5.2 million passengers between January and March.

Additionally, the Kyiv School of Economics has reported that more than 1,000 "self-sanctioning" companies have curtailed their operations in Russia.

The MOEX Russia stock index has plunged by about a quarter since just before the invasion and is down nearly 40 percent from the start of the year. And the Russian Central Bank said last week that annualized inflation came in at 17.8 percent in April.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has reported suffering a staggering economic blow: 35% of GDP wiped out by the war.

"Our direct losses today exceed $600 billion," Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, said recently.

Ukraine, a major agricultural producer, says it has been unable to export some 22 million tons of grain. It blames a backlog of shipments on Russian blockades or capture of key ports. Zelenskyy accused Russia this week of stealing at least a half-million tons of grain during the invasion.

... And the world
The fallout has rippled around the globe, further driving up costs for basic goods on top of inflation that was already in full swing in many places before the invasion.

Crude oil prices in London and New York have risen by 20 to 25 percent, resulting in higher prices at the pump and for an array of petroleum-based products.

Developing countries are being squeezed particularly hard by higher costs of food, fuel and financing, according to economist Richard Kozul-Wright of the UN Conference on Trade and Development.

Wheat supplies have been disrupted in African nations, which imported 44% of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine in the years immediately before the invasion. The African Development Bank has reported a 45% increase in continental prices for the grain, affecting everything from Mauritanian couscous to the fried donuts sold in Congo.



Legal Threats Close in on Israel's Netanyahu, Could Impact Ongoing Wars

The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT
The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT
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Legal Threats Close in on Israel's Netanyahu, Could Impact Ongoing Wars

The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT
The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. (Photo by Laurens van PUTTEN / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces legal perils at home and abroad that point to a turbulent future for the Israeli leader and could influence the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, analysts and officials say.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) stunned Israel on Thursday by issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 13-month-old Gaza conflict. The bombshell came less than two weeks before Netanyahu is due to testify in a corruption trial that has dogged him for years and could end his political career if he is found guilty. He has denied any wrongdoing. While the domestic bribery trial has polarized public opinion, the prime minister has received widespread support from across the political spectrum following the ICC move, giving him a boost in troubled times.
Netanyahu has denounced the court's decision as antisemitic and denied charges that he and Gallant targeted Gazan civilians and deliberately starved them.
"Israelis get really annoyed if they think the world is against them and rally around their leader, even if he has faced a lot of criticism," said Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
"So anyone expecting that the ICC ruling will end this government, and what they see as a flawed (war) policy, is going to get the opposite," he added.
A senior diplomat said one initial consequence was that Israel might be less likely to reach a rapid ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon or secure a deal to bring back hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.
"This terrible decision has ... badly harmed the chances of a deal in Lebanon and future negotiations on the issue of the hostages," said Ofir Akunis, Israel's consul general in New York.
"Terrible damage has been done because these organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas ... have received backing from the ICC and thus they are likely to make the price higher because they have the support of the ICC," he told Reuters.
While Hamas welcomed the ICC decision, there has been no indication that either it or Hezbollah see this as a chance to put pressure on Israel, which has inflicted huge losses on both groups over the past year, as well as on civilian populations.
IN THE DOCK
The ICC warrants highlight the disconnect between the way the war is viewed here and how it is seen by many abroad, with Israelis focused on their own losses and convinced the nation's army has sought to minimize civilian casualties.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said the ICC move would likely harden resolve and give the war cabinet license to hit Gaza and Lebanon harder still.
"There's a strong strand of Israeli feeling that runs deep, which says 'if we're being condemned for what we are doing, we might just as well go full gas'," he told Reuters.
While Netanyahu has received wide support at home over the ICC action, the same is not true of the domestic graft case, where he is accused of bribery, breach of trust and fraud.
The trial opened in 2020 and Netanyahu is finally scheduled to take the stand next month after the court rejected his latest request to delay testimony on the grounds that he had been too busy overseeing the war to prepare his defense.
He was due to give evidence last year but the date was put back because of the war. His critics have accused him of prolonging the Gaza conflict to delay judgment day and remain in power, which he denies. Always a divisive figure in Israel, public trust in Netanyahu fell sharply in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas assault on southern Israel that caught his government off guard, cost around 1,200 lives.
Israel's subsequent campaign has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced nearly all Gaza's population at least once, triggering a humanitarian catastrophe, according to Gaza officials.
The prime minister has refused advice from the state attorney general to set up an independent commission into what went wrong and Israel's subsequent conduct of the war.
He is instead looking to establish an inquiry made up only of politicians, which critics say would not provide the sort of accountability demanded by the ICC.
Popular Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said the failure to order an independent investigation had prodded the ICC into action. "Netanyahu preferred to take the risk of arrest warrants, just as long as he did not have to form such a commission," it wrote on Friday.
ARREST THREAT
The prime minister faces a difficult future living under the shadow of an ICC warrant, joining the ranks of only a few leaders to have suffered similar humiliation, including Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic.
It also means he risks arrest if he travels to any of the court's 124 signatory states, including most of Europe.
One place he can safely visit is the United States, which is not a member of the ICC, and Israeli leaders hope US President-elect Donald Trump will bring pressure to bear by imposing sanctions on ICC officials.
Mike Waltz, Trump's nominee for national security advisor, has already promised tough action: "You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January,” he wrote on X on Friday. In the meantime, Israeli officials are talking to their counterparts in Western capitals, urging them to ignore the arrest warrants, as Hungary has already promised to do.
However, the charges are not going to disappear soon, if at all, meaning fellow leaders will be increasingly reluctant to have relations with Netanyahu, said Yuval Shany, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.
"In a very direct sense, there is going to be more isolation for the Israeli state going forward," he told Reuters.