For a year Ukraine has been in a defensive war against the Russian invaders. Since then, the news from the battered country has been accompanied by the constant reference that an independent verification of facts and statistics is not possible. International organisations, governments and secret services are nevertheless trying to put the consequences of the war in numbers. A sober balance sheet, behind which unspeakable human suffering is hidden.
The information from the armies involved about their own losses is sparse and unreliable. On the anniversary of the invasion, the military leadership in Kiev reported that 145,850 Russian soldiers had been killed (as of Thursday). According to British intelligence published by the London Ministry of Defense, up to 60,000 soldiers or mercenaries have been killed on the Russian side. The British did not report numbers of dead or injured Ukrainian soldiers.
According to the UN Human Rights Commissioner (OHCHR), more than 8,000 civilians have died in fighting since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and more than 13,000 were injured. At least 487 children have died in the conflict, according to the UN agency’s official record. However, the OHCHR assumes that the real number of injured and dead in the Ukrainian civilian population is much higher.
More than eight million registered Ukraine refugees across Europe, more than five million people fleeing within the attacked country – these are the figures given by the UN agency UNHCR. The neighboring country of Poland and Germany took in the most people, each with over a million.
The Ukrainian government accuses Russia of more than 70,000 war crimes since the invasion began, including torture and killings, rapes and attacks on civilians. According to public prosecutor Myroslava Krasnoborovad, who is also a member of the European judicial authority Eurojust in The Hague, charges have been brought against 276 people, 99 trials have been opened and 26 judgments have been passed.
The federal government announced that Germany alone had made more than 14 billion euros available to support the attacked Ukraine. Humanitarian aid, direct payments in Ukraine and to refugees or arms deliveries were financed. The Germans have also digged deep into their private pockets: According to the German Donations Council, donations for people fleeing increased by 227 percent to more than one billion euros last year – most of it at the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
“The pacesetter” among the international supporters is the USA, says Christoph Trebesch from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. There, military, financial and humanitarian aid for Ukraine is listed and quantified in a “Ukraine Support Tracker”. The Americans have earmarked a good 73 billion euros for supporting Ukraine since the beginning of the war. For the EU, the comparable value is almost 55 billion euros. As the year progressed, pledges of humanitarian assistance lost weight, while the share of financial and military aid pledges grew.
