The fighting in Ukraine has been going on for a year now – it’s Europe’s bloodiest conflict in the 21st century. Casualties on both sides exceeded the combined casualties in the clashes in Donbass, which lasted from 2014 to 2022. The scale of the conflict in Ukraine is comparable to the Yugoslav wars, which in total claimed more than 50,000 lives. RTVI analyzed the connections between the fighting in Ukraine and other conflicts in Russian, European and world history that have unfolded since the end of World War II.
Losses in Ukraine
Since the start of hostilities on February 22, Russian army casualties in the conflict with Ukraine have amounted to at least 5,937 people, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on September 21, 2002. of the DPR, since January 1, 2022, 3,930 soldiers have been killed and 16,477 wounded, according to data from DPR Ombudsman Darya Morozov on November 25 last year. The LPR does not talk about its losses. On the Ukrainian side, between 10,000 and 13,000 soldiers were killed during the hostilities, argued at the beginning of last December, Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to Volodymyr Zelensyy’s chief of staff.
It is difficult to determine the exact losses of the parties to the conflict, since the Ukrainian and Russian authorities do not provide detailed data. As for other estimates of Ukrainian casualties, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley noted that the number of Ukrainian servicemen killed and wounded was around 100,000. estimated Russian Ministry of Defense in September 2022, Ukraine’s losses during the conflict amounted to 61,207 dead and 49,368 wounded.
Russian law prohibits the publication of data on the losses of the Russian army during hostilities from unofficial sources. But even if we follow the information from the Ministry of Defense, the conflict has become the bloodiest for the country, at least since the war in Afghanistan, where 15,000 Russian soldiers died in almost 10 years.
Even taking into account conservative estimates, the losses of the parties to the Ukrainian conflict in February-October 2022 have already exceeded the losses of the entire period of hostilities in the Donbass. By data UN, during the eight years of the conflict, 6.5 thousand people died on the part of the DNR and the LNR, and 4.4 thousand on the part of Ukraine. At the same time, in the fall of 2022, Kiev, the LDNR and Moscow announced their losses of up to 23,000 people, including almost 10,000 in Russia and the Donbas republics. These losses are incomparable to those that Russia suffered during the conflict in Syria (120 people ) or during an operation in Georgia (67 people ).
yugoslavian conflict
The last conflict in Europe of comparable magnitude is the war against the background of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which broke out into five countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Since 2006, Serbia and Montenegro have become separate countries. The collapse of the country was accompanied by ethnic conflicts between Serbs and Albanians, Bosnians and Croats.
The most devastating episode of the Yugoslav Wars was the conflict in Bosnia between ethnic Serbs and Bosniaks, with the casualties of the killed parties amounting to nearly 50,000 people. Quasi-military formations took part in the hostilities of the 1990s and tens of thousands of civilians were victims of ethnic clashes. Total years of life from 1991 to 1999 lost 140,000 people, including the civilian population. A decade of wars destroyed Yugoslavia’s economy, and educated professionals and young people left the region due to security threats.
It was only possible to put an end to the Yugoslav wars thanks to the intervention of Western countries. In 1995, in the American city of Dayton, the presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Yugoslavia signed agreements that ended civil war and ethnic cleansing. As a result, Bosnia and Herzegovina became a federal state, consisting of Serb and Bosnian-Croat parts.
In 1999, after the bombardment of American planes, the Serbian authorities were forced to cut short the military campaign in Kosovo – Serbian territory whose majority of the population were Muslim Albanians – refusing to put it back under their control by force. Despite the stabilization of the situation after the introduction of a NATO contingent in Kosovo, the consequences of the conflict still hamper the development of the region: regular aggravations occur between Pristina and Belgrade, and the Serbian government categorically refuses to recognize the region’s independence. The uncertainty surrounding Kosovo’s status, in turn, prevents both the partially recognized state and Serbia from joining the European Union.
Europe on the road to militarization
After the end of World War II, Europe remained a relatively peaceful region. The vast majority of deaths in military conflicts from 1945 to the present have occurred in Asia (44%), the Middle East (28%) and Africa (21%), while Europe accounts for only 4 %. Moreover, more than half of the “European” casualties occurred as a result of two conflicts: the war in Bosnia in 1992-95 (nearly 50,000) and the civil war in Greece in 1946-49 (43,400). The conflict in Donbass and the fighting in Ukraine have already claimed at least 30,000 lives, including civilians.
The memory of the victims of the Second World War and the ever-increasing risks of escalation protected Europe from conflicts during the era of the so-called Yalta-Potsdam world order, which divided the region into spheres of influence between the West and the USSR. Although there was not a single decade without large-scale wars after the end of World War II, they were fought outside of Europe. The three bloodiest conflicts are the Korean War (over 900,000 soldiers killed), the Vietnam War (over a million), the Iran-Iraq War (also over a million).
The USSR and the USA indirectly participated in wars in countries far apart from each other – be it Korea, Vietnam or Afghanistan. The risk of a direct confrontation between the superpowers has arisen only twice. The first time was during the Berlin Crisis in 1961, when the USSR demanded the withdrawal of American, British and French troops from West Berlin and declared it a “demilitarized free city”. Military equipment began to flow into the Berlin checkpoint, and the Soviet government suspended the transfer of conscripts to the reserve. As a result, the contradiction was settled, West Berlin received a special status, and the GDR authorities surrounded it with a wall.
The second crisis came after the deployment of missiles by the Soviet Union in Cuba, which US authorities perceived as an unacceptable threat and began preparations to overthrow the communist regime of Fidel Castro. In the end, the USSR withdrew the missiles from Cuba in exchange for American guarantees that they would withdraw their missiles from Turkey and not overthrow the Castro regime.
Third World Ghost
The situation around Ukraine not only risks reigniting the militarization of Europe, but has already escalated the degree of confrontation between Moscow and Washington to a state not seen since the Caribbean crisis. Peace talks to resolve the differences have come to nothing, and in the coming months, experts only expect hostilities to intensify.
Russia and the West are also increasing spending on expanding military-industrial complexes, preparing for a protracted confrontation. “We clearly expect hostilities to continue, which will likely continue for at least most of 2023, and possibly well into 2024. <...> It is difficult to imagine the possibility of a political agreement that would suit both sides,” Vasily Kashin, director of the Center for Advanced European and International Studies at the National University’s Higher School of Economics, told RTVI. of research.
Some experts fear that the conflict between Russia and the West could escalate into a full-scale global war with hotbeds of clashes on different continents. About such a threat, in particular, writing historian Niall Ferguson, warning of a possible outbreak of hostilities between China and the United States over Taiwan, as well as a risky situation around the Iranian nuclear program, which will provoke a strong reaction from Israel. “There is a worst-case scenario in which we are approaching the 1940s, when regional conflicts coalesce into something like World War III, but with smaller armies, many unmanned weapon systems and much bombs. more powerful and precise,” he notes. .
