Counting enemy casualties as a metric of victory has often gone wrong in previous wars. But there are reasons to suspect it might be more successful for Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine is well into its fifth year and, despite attempts to find a negotiated solution, there seems to be no end in sight.  

Over the past few months, the Ukrainian military has slowly recaptured the operational initiative and is starting to dictate the pace of the fighting once again. The Ukrainian strategy on the ground is simple and cold-blooded: kill as many Russian troops as possible, ensuring the Kremlin cannot keep up with reinforcements and forcing Moscow into retreat. 

Ukraine Has a Daily Quota of Dead Russians  

Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, recently revealed Kyiv’s straightforward strategy to defeat Russia’s invasion force: kill or wound as many as possible.  

During a video interview with the British newspaper The Times, Syrskyi claimed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had put in place a strict daily casualty quota of more than 1,000 Russian troops. The Ukrainian general assessed that such a practice, if maintained for a sufficiently long period, would precipitate the collapse of the Russian Army and foil the Kremlin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

“War is a constant competition,” Syrskyi said. “Our main objective is to ensure that, every day, the enemy loses more than 1,000 personnel killed or wounded.”

According to data released regularly by the Ukrainian High Command—and periodically corroborated by Western militaries and intelligence services—Ukraine has largely kept on track with this goal. Russian military and paramilitary units have lost over 1.4 million troops since February 2022, with approximately 450,000 deaths. Though the Ukrainians are far more circumspect about their own losses, Ukrainian forces are generally regarded to have lost about 500,000 troops, with roughly 150,000 deaths. Ukrainian drones account for a large number of Russian battlefield casualties.

Casualties Aren’t Always a Useful Metric of Success

The Ukrainian military is not the first to use enemy casualties as a metric of success on the battlefield—and it must be observed that past instances of the practice did not always go well.

The US military infamously used kills as a metric of success during the Vietnam War. Although US commanders on the ground reported great success in terms of North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong irregulars killed, the deaths were never enough; in many cases, by killing villagers with Viet Cong affiliation, the US military antagonized other villagers into joining the same units, meaning the practical battlefield loss for the guerrillas was minimal. All the while, US forces also took losses, which were far less replaceable and led to a decisive slide in American public opinion against the war. As North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh is alleged to have told the French, America’s predecessors in the Vietnam War, “You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.”

A similar kill-focused strategy proved equally ineffective in the southern African country then known as Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), whose white inhabitants attempted to preserve minority rule against the African communist guerrilla movements ZANU and ZAPU during the 1960s and 1970s. The Rhodesian military kept track of enemy fighters killed in action, and the numbers were extraordinarily encouraging; by the end of the war, security forces had killed approximately 40,000 insurgents at a cost of 1,735 troops, a 23:1 kill ratio. Nevertheless, economic losses from guerrilla activity and international sanctions forced the white government into British-mediated talks, leading to eventual majority rule and the rise to power of former ZANU leader Robert Mugabe. In Rhodesia, as in Vietnam, battlefield success was not the be-all and end-all for the outcome of the war.

Why an Attrition War Against Russia Could Favor Ukraine

Is the Ukraine case different? It is, in two notable ways. First, while Vietnam and Zimbabwe were essentially guerrilla wars, the ongoing war in Ukraine is a conventional military conflict between two modern armies. The Russian Army’s recruitment process is more complicated than the Viet Cong’s, and more expensive. The Russian government is paying out hiring bonuses of tens of thousands of dollars to new recruits. In turn, when those recruits are killed or maimed, it is responsible for other costs—the ongoing cost of healthcare to surviving veterans, payments to surviving family members if killed, and so on.

The situation is different in a second critical way. While Vietnamese and Zimbabwean guerrillas were (ostensibly) fighting for national liberation, Russian forces are fighting to invade and subjugate a neighboring country. Russia has made little secret of this fact: one appeal to would-be Russian soldiers has been the possibility of looting captured Ukrainian territory, as well as the opportunity to gain free housing there (presumably at the expense of its previous owners). Russian actions and statements have left little doubt that if Ukraine loses this war, the identity of the country will be lost; Russian occupational authorities have already banned the Ukrainian language and mandated the Russian Orthodox Church in Russian-occupied Ukraine. These steps have stiffened Ukrainian resistance and weakened Russia’s fig-leaf claim that it merely intends to “demilitarize and de-Nazify” its western neighbor. 

Although Russia is historically known for its great capacity to endure losses in combat, the steadily rising levels of losses and the seemingly unending nature of the conflict put pressure on the Kremlin. To soften the blow to its own forces, the Kremlin has been recruiting soldiers from Africa, often through underhanded means such as the promise of non-military jobs in Russia; it is also increasingly recruiting women for combat roles. 

These developments suggest that Moscow is already having trouble meeting its recruitment targets. At some point, if this trend continues, it will need to start drawing men from urban centers to fight in Ukraine—a step that is certain to cause the political backlash and unrest that Putin fears and has attempted to delay for as long as possible.  

In that sense, the Ukrainian military’s daily quota for Russian soldiers killed in action might be an effective metric of success in the long run.  

About the Author: Stavros Atlamazoglou

Stavros Atlamazoglouis a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operationsand a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University, an MA from the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a JD from Boston College Law School. His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP. 

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