By davidpeinado @ Adobe Stock
In The Wall Street Journal, Bojan Pancevski reports that the death toll in the Russia-Ukraine War has surpassed one million souls. He writes:
The number of Ukrainians and Russians killed or wounded in the grinding 2½-year war has reached roughly one million, a staggering toll that two countries struggling with shrinking prewar populations will pay far into the future.
Determining the exact number of dead and wounded in the conflict has been difficult, with Russia and Ukraine declining to release official estimates or, at times, putting out figures that are widely mistrusted.
A confidential Ukrainian estimate from earlier this year put the number of dead Ukrainian troops at 80,000 and the wounded at 400,000, according to people familiar with the matter. Western intelligence estimates of Russian casualties vary, with some putting the number of dead as high as nearly 200,000 and wounded at around 400,000.
The losses are causing problems for Russia as it uses waves of poorly trained soldiers to try to advance in Ukraine’s east while also trying to counter a recent Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk region. But they are significantly more damaging for Ukraine, with a population less than one-quarter the size of its giant neighbor’s.
The high—and fast-rising—tolls on both sides highlight what will be a devastating long-term effect for countries that were struggling with population declines before the war mainly because of economic turmoil and social upheavals. They also illuminate one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s own motivations behind launching the invasion in 2022: to boost Russia’s population by absorbing Ukrainians. Russia’s invasions and capture of Ukrainian territory over the past decade have caused Ukraine to lose at least 10 million people under occupation or as refugees, according to government estimates and demographers.
Read more here.
TRUMP: “I want the war to stop. I want to save lives.”
— VAS (@VTount) September 11, 2024
If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.
