Beyond the cringy arrows, that Russian armored vehicles were geolocated inside the village of Robotyne today, is true. What is not clear yet is whether they have been able to gain a stable presence in the village or were repelled and, moreover, if they were able to seize the large system of fortifications between Robotyne and Novoprokopivka. It’s unclear whether the vehicles arrived in that point from the south or from the west (from the video it looks like from the west, but I’m not sure as I’m not a geolocation expert). In the latter case, we would still have no indication about the status of the area of the fortifications to the south and whether or not it has been abandoned by the Ukrainians.
As early as last Sunday some Russian assault squads had managed to enter the limits of the village by crossing T0408 Road from the west, to be repelled or taken prisoner by the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade. In the following days the UAV unit of the 65th Mechanized Brigade attacked the Russians near the houses along T0408 Road, which suggests that the Russians may have established some positions in the western end of Robotyne.
DeepState has actually been silent over the last week in clarifying the situation in the area of Robotyne (for understandable reasons), except for an update about the gray area north of Novoprokopivka. For example, it’s pretty sure the Ukrainians have lost control over the forest belt 6/700 meters to the west of T0408 Road, which is still marked as Ukrainian-held.
The only relevant update there has been from DS is a Russian advance of about 1,5 km northwards to the north-west of Verbove (one of the “Surovikin” lines passed in that area), which initially surprised even Russian sources. It could have negative consequences because it’s an advantageous area in terms of elevation, as it dominates the entire valley to the north-east of Robotyne, which the Ukrainians, with great effort and sacrifice, had managed to occupy between the second half of July and the first half of August and later led to the fall of Robotyne.
The situation is still unclear. In the comments under their latest post on Telegram, DeepState answered to a question on the matter by writing that it’s not yet known whether the Russians have been driven out of the village or not, after their attack of this morning.
After the ones with the UK, Germany, France and Denmark, a 10-year security agreement with both Italy and Canada was signed today in Kyiv between Zelensky and, respectively, Meloni and Trudeau.
Regarding the Italy-Ukraine agreement, the terms are not known and are in my opinion unlikely to be published, because of the quite tight secrecy of aid, especially military one, from Rome to Kyiv.
The G7 countries currently still outside this framework are the US and Japan.
A few notes: according to their previous last estimate of the amount of under-50 Russians who fell in Ukraine, they were 47 thousand by the end of May 2023. Now they are indeed 75 thousand at the beginning of January 2024. The figure excludes the MIAs and the over-50s - according to the latest estimate by BBC News Russian, which cooperates with Mediazona, Russian fatalities at the end of September 2023 were 86 thousand (I have not found confirmation, but the figure might include the MIAs, as well as the over 50s). Also according to other estimates of these two organizations, the KIAs/MIAs of the D/LPR were more than 23 thousand. The latter died largely between the spring and the autumn of 2022, and so we must be careful about the seemingly low number of Russian KIAs during that period, even during the costly (for both sides) Donbas offensive: simply, it was largely the personnel of the armies of the two self-styled autonomous republics that fell in action. At the same time we must be careful to say that, according to such calculations, 28 thousand Russians died in the last 7 months of 2023 (75 minus 47), as the more recent the month, fewer confirmations of deaths there are, and many deaths are included later. Over the last months, sometimes a dozen, other times 20ish and up to 40 obituaries of fallen servicemen from Wagner PMC (who fell largely in the Bakhmut/Soledar campaign) are still published every week.
Moreover, by Mediazona’s estimate the number of fallen convicts would rise from 8 thousand (confirmed) to 19 thousand (estimated). But if we recall that per Wagner sources 15 thousand convicts had died within their ranks, it’s implausible that only 4 thousand convicts died over the last year in the ranks of Storm-Z/V units. Although convicts are indeed the category for which it’s most difficult to find reports confirming their deaths.
My personal estimate is that Russia’s irretrievable losses (dead, missing, wounded permanently unable to serve, POWs currently in Ukrainian hands), counting those who fought for Russia within any rank, are close to the Ukrainian estimate (about 400 thousand - which should in fact be the estimate of irretrievable losses, despite the fact that many people, including Ukrainian officials, keep claiming otherwise).
As for UALosses, I take a look at it sometimes. In general, it should be legit and the place of death of the fallen soldiers almost always reflect the location of deployment of a unit at a given time, and to a lesser extent also the geographic origin of soldiers based on the area brigades usually recruit from (this is particularly true for TDF brigades). However, there are several errors that undermine its full reliability; I recall finding a few duplicates or minor errors such as a KIA from the 42nd Motorized Battalion (57th Motorized Brigade) classified as a KIA from the 42nd Mechanized Brigade (if I recall correctly).
Mediazona had estimated that for every fallen Russian soldier there are approximately 1,7 “severely wounded” soldiers (which we can approximate to those who have permanently lost combat capability). The figure is also very credible in a historical comparison. If I recall correctly, in WW2 the US Army’s wounded returning to front-line duty were about 2/3 of the total amount of wounded; in general, the share of invalid wounded being around 40% of the total in certain conflicts can be broadly plausible, especially in the context of the current war. According to the latest published data from official DPR sources, as of December 2022, the KIA : WIA ratio was 4,16. Applying the 40% invalid share, we are at 1,66.
Now the matter concerns the actual amount of Russian KIAs/MIAs. If BBC News Russian with Mediazona had estimated 86 thousand fatalities by the end of September 2023, plausibly counting the MIAs but excluding the datas of D/LPR armies from 2022, is it possible that by February 2024 the total KIA/MIA tally of men who fought for the Russian side within any rank could be, well, around 130 thousand, if not more? In my opinion, it might be (let’s remember the 120k RU KIAs estimation from US officials in August 2023, likely a bit exaggerated back then). Applying the coefficient above and adding a small handful of thousands of POWs, we are no longer that far off the Ukrainian numbers, once you count a margin of error.
As for the wounded who have lost fighting capability, I mean those who cannot return to war, not necessarily men disabled for life or maimed. Here Mediazona seems to explain that the ratio of 1 : 1,7 concerns the severely wounded, while the ratio which includes the total amount of wounded is in the range of 1 : 3-4, as indeed it could be intuitive to expect.
Your observation about the wounded/casualty count is particularly true and very interesting. The aggregate data should in theory be adjusted, but we know that this is often not the case. But as for the ratio, it looks like to be in line with that of wars for which we have more reliable counts.
I agree about POWs - I generally include them as the Soviets did back in WW2 while counting irretrievable losses, but today a POW is no longer irretrievable as there are exchanges. Either way… the POWs are a tiny fraction of the losses of both sides in this war.
As for the total number of people who fought for the Russian side at some point in the past and today no longer serve (because they died, because they were former Wagnerites who didn’t sign with the MoD and returned home, and many other instances), a while ago I had tried to provide a rough estimate based on declarations from Russian officials about the number of servicemen currently serving and the amount that invaded Ukraine at the beginning, that they mobilized later and so on - I don’t think it’s less than 600 thousand men. But this figure is not so relevant since, for example, those who signed a contract and went home at its expiration (at least before September 2022) could be recalled in the future if there is a new mobilization wave.