The U.S. and NATO continue to escalate a war that only serves to use Ukraine as sacrificial lamb on the altar of NATO expansion to Russia’s borders and elsewhere. In response, Moscow is on the verge of levelling a debilitating attack on Ukraine using its revolutionary Oreshkin missile and other advanced weapons. At the same time, Russia’s ground forces are advancing on the ground at an accelerating pace as I suggested would be the case a year ago. The following is a republication of the second half of my September 2023 article “From Strategic Dilemma to Strategic Disaster” (https://gordonhahn.com/2023/09/19/from-strategic-dilemma-to-strategic-disaster-parts-1-2-full/). An updated consideration of Ruin II will be forthcoming.
Ukraine’s Ruin II
The great Cossack ‘Ruin’, which like Cossack legacies themselves have been appropriated by modern day Ukrainians by dint of its occurrence on Cossack lands, was a period of civil war, anarchy, chaos, and devastation nurtured by foreign powers’ interventions. In many ways, it resembles Russia’s ‘Smuta’ or Time of Troubles of seven-eight decades earlier, which combined chaos, internal conflict, and foreign, mostly Polish intervention. The 17th century great ‘Ukrainian’ or Cossack ‘Ruin’, which lasted from the death of Cossack Hetman Bodgan Khmelnitskiy in 1657 until the rise of the next great hetman, Ivan Mazepa, in 1687. Khmelnitskiy led the dominant Zaporozhian Cossacks to sign the 1654 Pereslavl Treaty, which brought many Cossack lands under Russian sovereignty. But chaos and destruction were sewn through political machinations, violent raiding, and full-scale attacks by Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire, and the Crimean Tatar Khanate, occasionally backed by Sweden in order to contest Russian and Cossack sovereignty. In particular, the Polish-Russian War (1654-1667) sparked by the Pereslavl treaty generated much of the conflict and dislocation of the Ruin. Other wars raged across what is today Ukraine: the Ukrainian-Polish war (1666-1671), the Ukrainian-Moscow war (1665-1676), and the Polish-Turkish war (1672-1676), with various Cossack groups joining and changing sides often enough.
At the same time, Russia’s protection and presence, combined with the pressure from other ‘Others’, especially the hated Poles, formed a contrast against which a Cossack identity began to be consolidated across a broader swathe of the population on both sides of the Dniepr. The Russian attempt to subdue and organize the Cossacks, who had declared their loyalty to the tsar, violated Cossack traditions of decentralization, anarchic freedom, lack of rule of law, and a resulting internecine conflict and violence. Discontent with and internal disagreements over Russian rule fueled further conflict between those who supported and opposed it. Additional internal tensions were driven by conflict between non-Catholic nobles and the Cossack officer class or ‘starshina’ over new, ownerless lands seized from Poland and comprising some 50 percent of Cossack territory. The fighting over these lands divided the poor peasantry from rich, landed Cossacks.
But most unsettling was the fighting between Russia and Poland over Cossack territories, with Poland struggling to control the ‘right’ or western bank Ukraine and Russia usually the ‘left’ or eastern bank. This forced Cossack hetmen, starshina, and ‘society’ to split between these and other outside forces, leading to internal power struggles, constantly shifting allegiances that pitted Cossack against Cossack as well as Cossacks against outsiders. The Ruin’s consequences included: the division of Cossack (Ukrainian) lands by Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and Ottoman Turkey, Polish-controlled right bank Ukraine’s loss of more than half of its inhabitants many of them to the Russian controlled left bank, and the mass devastation of Cossack settlements. It was not until the end of Catherine the Great’s reign, when the left bank Cossacks lost the limited autonomy they had enjoyed under the Pereslavl Treaty, that Cossackdom’s entire left bank and much of the right bank lands were stabilized and integrated into the Russian Imperial system.
Ultimately, the great 17th century ‘Ruin’ could very well pale in significance to the ongoing time of troubles Ukraine is beginning to experience under Russia’s SVO. Ukraine, of course, is not the first country in this part of the world to fall victim to the seemingly eternal contest between Russia and the West. When statesmanship fails one or both sides of the East-West civilizational divide, the small countries situated between them suffer calamity. This is the case with today’s expansion of NATO throughout Eastern Europe to Russia’s borders and the Russian military response. No country in the post-Cold war era has experienced anything near the catastrophe now unfolding in Ukraine’s Ruin II.
In terms of the human toll being exacted by the escalating war, we can assume a minimum 120,000 dead and 220,000 wounded on the Ukrainian side. This estimate is perhaps low. Most Western estimates suggest far too few Ukrainian losses and far too many Russian casualties. Western and Ukrainian estimates of Ukrainian losses are so absurdly low that they are not even worth citing. On the other hand, one source extrapolating to Ukraine nationwide from satellite images of cemeteries and the increase in their sizes in seven regions estimates 350,000-400,000 Ukrainian war dead. It adds that since dead-to-injured ratios in war are usually 1-5 or 1-7, a reasonable estimate of total casualties on the Ukrainian side is approximately 2 million. However, these conclusions use rather rough instruments. For example, the population in Ukraine’s Western regions has been drawn upon far less in manning the army, so extrapolating the number of new graves in the east to cemeteries in the west is misguided. Taking this estimate down to 200,000 killed (rather than 350,000-400,000) and assuming a 1-3 killed-wounded ratio sometimes deemed appropriate, we could make an estimate of Ukrainian forces’ casualties at 800,000 (https://telegra.ph/INTEL-EXCLUSIVE-08-02). This is the very upper limit of what I estimate to be a possible range for the number of Ukrainians killed and wounded (if we exclude Ukrainian casualties among civilians on both sides and among those fighting on the separatist side). However, if one reads the Russian Defense Ministry’s estimates of Ukrainian casualties each day, it will be noticed that they amount to an approximate average of perhaps 600 per day until this summer’s counteroffensive or the first 15 months of the war. This would mean 18,000 casualties per month for the 15 months prior to this summer’s counteroffensive, giving a total from February 2022 through May 2023 of 270,000 killed and wounded Ukrainian soldiers. The figures for this summer’s counteroffensive were some 20 percent higher, with the Russian Defense Ministry estimating some 66,000 for June through August. This means a total of approximately 336,000 Ukrainian military killed and wounded, according to the official Russian sources. However, it would be reasonable to suspect that Russian figures are ‘optimistic’, overstated, and therefore high. Therefore, I offer a rough estimate of some 300,000 casualties among Ukrainian forces overall between 24 February 2022 and 31 August 2023. On the other hand, even Ukrainian sources are reporting astounding losses, suggesting a darker picture than that I just painted. For example, the Ukrainian press is reporting that perhaps 80-90 percent of the ground forces recruited in autumn 2022 have already been lost (https://strana.news/news/445536-itohi-571-dnja-vojny-v-ukraine.html). In short, we could very well have already half a million Ukrainian military casualties.
Plus, there have been, very roughly speaking, some 50,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine. The UN’s OHCHR has recorded from 24 February 2022 to 27 August 2023, 26,717 civilian casualties in the country: 9,511 killed and 17,206 injured. Nearly one quarter of these occurred in Russian-held territory. The UN OHCHR notes, however, that the actual number of casualties is likely much higher (www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/08/ukraine-civilian-casualty-update-28-august-2023). This brings an overall estimate of Ukrainian casualties to some 350,000 as of September 1, 2023. I do not exclude the possibility that they could be substantially higher, but if the Russians are reporting figures along the lines I have provided here, then it seems unlikely they would be 50 percent or 100 percent higher, but who really knows. I do not think it likely that Ukraine’s casualty figures for the period discussed here can be significantly lower than this. With Ukrainian losses accelerating in September so far, we can project that if all else remains approximately as things are going, Ukraine will reach 1 million casualties by late autumn of 2024. My estimates, which will seem high to those who relay on Ukrainian and Western sources, are further buttressed by reports in August — at what is likely to be near the tail end of the counteroffensive — that Kiev is constructing a new military cemetery that will hold an additional 400,000 war dead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs8-2xAZto0&t=26s&ab_channel=MilitarySummary). The size of cemeteries already in place are enormous and growing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6owz8zD6fHs&ab_channel=%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9%D0%A5%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2). Russian losses are likely to be approximately one-third of Ukrainian losses.
The war’s casualties are being driven by an escalation cycle supported both by NATO and Moscow. Every escalation by one side routinely meets an escalation from the other, damaging not just both sides’ human and material resources prompting more escalation greater destruction of Ukrainians, their land, and all manner of infrastructure. For example, when the US decided to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, which began sing them, making Russia ‘worse off’, Russia announced it would use and has begun using cluster munitions, rendering Ukrainian forces worse off. Casualties on this scale will leave a large wound on Ukrainian life, and one need only compare the scar on the U.S. left by the Vietnam war, which saw relatively fewer casualties — some 210,000 — spread out over a fifteen-year not a year and one-half period.
Ukraine’s population is suffering from another attrition—that of exodus resulting from those fleeing the war, military mobilization, economic collapse, and a corrupt predatory state. The UN High Commission on Refugees estimates that as of 28 August 2023 since the beginning of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ (SVO) in February 2022, 6,203,030 Ukrainians have fled Ukraine (https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/103134). This figure means Ukraine’s population has fallen from 42 to 36 million since the SVO began. But this holds only for Ukraine’s population on the territory Kiev controlled in 1991-2014. The loss of Crimea and most of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts in 2014 and much of Zaporozhe and Kherson Oblasts due to Russian annexation or occupation since the SVO began reduces Ukraine’s population by another 4 million, meaning it now stands at some 32 million. Others estimate the population within Ukraine’s 1991 borders as of January 1, 2023 at only 37.6 million people, 32.6 million within the 2022 borders (minus Crimea), and 31.1 million in the territories currently controlled by the Ukrainian government (minus Crimea and most of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhe, and Kherson Oblasts) (www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraines-demography-second-year-full-fledged-war, see also https://t.me/stranaua/120211). Adding in the war dead and the population under Kiev’s control, the country’s population falls to under 31 million.
To this picture must be added the socioeconomic disturbance caused by an internal refugee population (people displaced from their homes) of 5,088,000 caused by the war as of 23 May 2023 (https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/103134). Moreover, approximately 17.6 million people in Ukraine require urgent humanitarian support, including the 5 million internally displaced, according to the UNHCR (www.reuters.com/world/europe/blood-billions-cost-russias-war-ukraine-2023-08-23).
Thus, if we set the population currently under Kiev’s control at 31 million, then Ukraine has lost more than 20 percent of its population since the war began, and at present more than 15 percent of the remaining population consists of internally displaced refugees and more than half the population is in need of urgent humanitarian support. The demographic picture is further darkened by declining birth rates caused by the war’s dislocations. Although Ukrainian birth rates have been declining ever since the Maidan, by 7 percent annually since 2013, only 96,755 children were born in Ukraine in the first six months of 2023, representing a 28% decline from the corresponding period of 2021 (135,079 children) and even less than in the corresponding period last year (https://t.me/rezident_ua/19018). If the war continues through 2024, it is possible that all these losses – already constituting a catastrophe – could be doubled, especially if Russian forces begin to advance east more rapidly, threatening other regions such as Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernigov, and Mikolaev more directly.
In non-human physical terms, Ukraine’s losses are equally staggering. Regarding territory, Ukraine has lost 11% of its territory since the start of the war, an area equivalent to Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut, according to the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. Including Crimea, Ukraine has lost about 17.5% of Ukraine, an area of about 41,000 square miles (106,000 square km) since the Maidan revolt (www.reuters.com/world/europe/blood-billions-cost-russias-war-ukraine-2023-08-23). Furthermore, these regions – which include Ukraine’s coal industry, much of its coastline, ports, and tourist venues – provided an inordinate share of Ukraine’s GDP. What is more, villages and towns in some parts of Ukrainian controlled territory have been bombed into moonscapes. Thus, total destruction of infrastructure was estimated by the UN at 100 billion (https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114022). Although this is likely an overestimate, even if the figure is half that then by end of summer 2023 Ukraine will have suffered $800 billion in infrastructure damage and destruction. Another way to assess the scale of the general infrastructural damage to the country is the measure of reconstruction assistance. The World Bank estimated the extent of damage as of March 2023 or for the first year of the war and concluded that Kiev needed then $411 billion in recovery assistance if the war ended then (www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2023/03/23/updated-ukraine-recovery-and-reconstruction-needs-assessment). Since then the war has extended another six months, so we can make a rough estimate of $615 billion of aid that would be needed if the war ended by October. By March 2024 the sum will be approximately $1 trillion. That raises the question of how much of that will ever arrive and how soon, raising the additional question of a grave humanitarian disaster and further emigration from the country.
The country’s GDP in current US dollars declined between 2021 and 2022 by some 15 percent – from $198 to $161 billion (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=UA). Thus, Ukraine’s GDP in 2015 dollars contracted by 30% in 2022 (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=UA). However, the IMF claims it is set to grow by 1% to 3% this year (www.reuters.com/world/europe/blood-billions-cost-russias-war-ukraine-2023-08-23). Nevertheless, one source concludes that Ukraine will need $50 billion in financial support in 2024 (https://t.me/rezident_ua/19017). Even if the GDP were grow 3 percent to reach $166 billion, with a projected 2024 budget deficit of $40 billion — which is also the amount spent on the military this year and will have to covered in good part by Western tax dollars and Euros — its budget-to-GDP ratio is around a catastrophic 25 percent. All this while Ukraine is benefitting from a payment holiday until mid-June on $20 billion in debt agreed upon with international bondholders such as MFS Investment Management, BlackRock, and Fidelity Investments (www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukraine-hunts-for-cash-as-fighting-drains-coffers-a6443e9c).
In emotional, psychological, and sociological terms, the catastrophe could be even far more unsettling. Post-war stress syndrome and trauma will tax society intensely. Michael Vlahos cites a figure of 50,000 Ukrainians have lost one or more limbs, close to the 67,000 for Germany for all of World War I (https://compactmag.com/article/the-ukrainian-army-is-breaking). Olha Rudneva, the head of the Superhumans Center for rehabilitating Ukrainian military amputees, estimates that 20,000 Ukrainians have experienced at least one amputation since the war began. But before the war, Ukraine had only five people with formal rehabilitation training for people with arm or hand amputations (www.aol.com/upward-20-000-ukrainian-amputees-060957047.html).
Finally, whatever ‘democracy’ survived in Ukraine before the war has now completely disappeared. Only those political parties approved by Zelenskiy are allowed to function, elections are cancelled ‘until the war ends’, all media is heavily censored, and the local affiliate of the Russian Orthodox Church is being repressed, its churches and monasteries have been taken over by the state and its some of its orphan priests arrested and facing trial, including the church’s metropolitan. Zelenskiy is abandoning his own political party, which is replete with corruption and public scandals, and has announced he would build a new party and elite based on those who served in the war. This, along with the radicalization war tends to bring, will strengthen the already too strong ultra-nationalist and neofascist element in Ukrainian politics. Societal divisions will be aggravated by the corrupt Ukrainian elite’s shameful privileges and profiting during the war. The ‘rich and famous’ are seen on social media partying on the world’s beaches while less connected young men are brutally kidnapped from the streets by recruiter-mobilizers to be sent to the front. The war has expanded corruption exponentially, as the Zelenskiy regime allows criminals and corrupt officials to accumulate massive illegal war and other profits in order to grease the wheels of the war machine and state-societal functions. The further corrupting, criminalization, and fascization of Europe’s most corrupt and neofascist country will make a revival of even a weak democracy — there supposed goal of US and Western policy — almost impossible.
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NEW BOOK
EUROPE BOOKS, 2022
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RECENT BOOKS
MCFARLAND BOOKS, 2021
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MCFARLAND BOOKS, 2018
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About the Author –
Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an Expert Analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com. Websites: Russian and Eurasian Politics, gordonhahn.com and gordonhahn.academia.edu
Dr. Hahn is the author of the new book: Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Thought, Culture, History, and Politics (Europe Books, 2022). He has authored five previous, well-received books: The Russian Dilemma: Security, Vigilance, and Relations with the West from Ivan III to Putin (McFarland, 2021); Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the “New Cold War” (McFarland, 2018); The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland, 2014), Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia’s Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction, 2002). He also has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media.
Dr. Hahn taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and was a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group.