Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
According to the account on the BBS WS, the criteria are even more stringent than that - the figure quoted is for deaths that are identifiable by name, from a range of sources including social media, press, cemetery inscriptions, etc.
I'd be amazed if the actual number of KIA didn't come to twice, or even three times that number.
Reliable data is scarce. The daily UKR data on Russian losses is seemingly KIA+WIA, and has been fairly informative daily data that has been plausible imho when you do various ratios (e.g. casulaties per vehicle/asset etc). The BBC KIA data is an undercount as you point out, but is at least a lower bound on KIA. There is also a data hole in the MIA area which may account for the gap between Ukraine's own stated KIA number and some reports of an actual KIA number that is higher, i.e. the stated KIA one perhaps excludes many MIA.
It is not good that USA internal politics have forced a war of attrition on to Ukraine over the last 6-months, and that failing can be shared very widely amongst the remainder of the Western allies who all still have not sufficiently resourced Ukraine's efforts to defend itself. But we are where we are. I sincerely hope that the removal of the USA blockage stabilises the short term, and that later in the year the F16 arrival makes both a quantitative and qualitative difference. Let us hope that penny packet arrivals of F16 do not lead to undue F16 (and crew/groundforce) attrition as they will get heavily targetted.
