One minute silence tomorrow to mark those killed in the war in Ukraine

Tomorrow will mark twelve months since President Putin ripped up the world order in which almost everyone now alive has grown up and sent his tanks into Ukraine in an unprovoked and illegal invasion.

Nobody can be certain how many people have died in Putin's war, but the number of casualties is certainly horrendous. 

The United Nations suggests that there have been an absolute minimum of 7,199 civilians killed in Ukraine and that the actual civilian death toll is almost certainly much higher: their conservative estimate of the real civilian death toll is about 16,000 and I have seen serious estimates that it may be as high as 30,000 over the year since Russia's full-scale invasion on 24th February 2022. 

It is even harder to estimate the number of soldiers killed on the two sides: Ukraine admits to having had 13,000 soldiers killed between February and December. 

Russia admitted in late September that there had been 5,937 Russian military deaths. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that there had been 

“significant losses of troops, and it’s a huge tragedy for us.”

The number of deaths admitted to by Russia in September was a small fraction of their actual losses even then, and by now the figure probably understates Russia's death toll by a factor of about ten. 

The latest UK Ministry of Defence estimate, as of a few days ago, is that Russia's army, allied supporting forces and military contractors have suffered between 40,000 and 60,000 soldiers killed with total casualties including missing and wounded which may have been as high as 200,000.

In memory of all the people who have been killed in Putin's war since the invasion twelve months ago tomorrow, there will be a national minute's silence at 11 am tomorrow.



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