DATE: 6 APR 2025
Executive Summary
Using the estimate of required efficiency based on comprehensive data from one elite brigade, we can say that the official enemy loss numbers published by the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine are reasonably accurate and realistic.
Losses of the Enemy Reported by the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine
The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine has been providing daily updates on enemy losses, including personnel, tanks, armored combat vehicles, and artillery. One source (Perun) as suggested that these numbers can be optimistic and may overstate the real losses of the enemy. Many times, third party sources are used with data confirmed via posted videos or photos with some multiplier applied to assess total losses.
What if one brigade documented all their activity and posted this on youtube? What if that brigade was an elite brigade within the Armed Forces of Ukraine? Can this tell us something about the accuracy of total losses reported by the MoD of Ukraine?
It turns out there is one such brigade that does this, the 414th Strike UAV Brigade, also known as the Birds of Magyar and it’s commander sometimes referred to as Mr Pointy Stick, who sometimes uses a pointer describing enemy losses caught on video. This brigade is part of the Marine Corps.
How can we use data from the 414th Brigade to validate the official number for all brigades in the AFU?
Sport teams as basis of Validation using % efficiency.
We need some method to assess their losses relative to remaining combat brigades. To do this we will first talk about a measure called efficiency as a percentage using a fictional sport league of 30 teams.
Assume:
· There is a league of 30 teams.
· The regular season has 15 games.
· In the last Regular season, the best team scored 30 points per game for a total of 450 points.
· The total points scored for all 30 teams was 4800 points.
How efficient were the 29 teams relative to the best team?
· Each team must have scored on average 150 points. (4800 - 450)/29 = 150
· The best team scored 450 points, so every other team scored 33% of the best team’s total points (150/450) * 100 = 33 %.
· 33% is the measure of efficiency for the remaining teams relative to the best team to achieve the total score of 4800 points.
Let us now look at how this maps to the study to validate the enemy losses published by the MoD of Ukraine.
Validation of Enemy Losses using Efficiency of 414th Brigade.
Below is the mapping between efficiency for sports teams and brigades in the AFU.
· Teams map to Brigades, we will use 94 Active brigades based on MilitaryLand.Net.
· A regular season will be one month of data.
· The Last season will be Data for January 2025.
· The best team will be The 414th Brigade.
· The remaining teams will map to the remaining 93 brigades.
· Points map to enemy losses. There will be for measures of efficiency, specifically:
o Personnel
o Tanks
o Armored Combat Vehicles
o Artillery
· Points for the best team map to losses reported by the 414th Brigade for January 2025.
· Total points for all teams map to losses reported by the MoD of Ukraine for the same month.
We are using a number lower than the cited 125 brigades mentioned by Butusov Plus, this makes sure that we arrive at a conservative value. Fewer brigades mean higher efficiency required.
Key interpretation for efficiency is:
· A low value suggests the official losses are conservative and therefore accurate.
· A high value suggests the official losses may be optimistic and not accurate.
Let us now look at the numbers.
Analysis for Validation of Enemy Losses
The 414th Brigade reports the following numbers for Enemy Losses during the Month of January 2025. Along side this is the official losses reported by the MoD of Ukraine for the same month.
|
Category |
Magyars Birds - January 2025 |
All Brigades - January 2025 |
|
Personnel |
1298 |
48060 |
|
Tanks |
79 |
225 |
|
Armored Combat Vehicles |
151 |
601 |
|
Artillery Systems |
68 |
917 |
For monthly figures, the report for 31st December 2024 was subtracted from the report for 31st January 2025 from the MoD of Ukraine.
A worked example for Personnel below.
· (48060 – 1298) / 93 = 502
· 502 / 1298 = 38.74%
This means the remaining brigades, on average had to be 38.74% as efficient as the 414th Brigade.
Now let’s look at required efficiency for each category.
|
Category |
Magyars Birds |
Per Brigade |
Required % Efficiency |
|
Personnel |
1298 |
503 |
38.74% |
|
Tanks |
79 |
2 |
1.99% |
|
Armored Combat Vehicles |
151 |
5 |
3.20% |
|
Artillery Systems |
68 |
9 |
13.43% |
Required efficiency is an estimate here and we see that for Tanks, Armored Combat Vehicles, and Artillery, the required efficiency is below 15%. We are asking if each brigade could destroy 2 tanks, 5 armored combat vehicles, and 9 artillery systems in one month. This looks very feasible.
For personnel we see the required efficiency is 38.74% and substantially higher than the other categories but still below 40%. Could the total number still be accurate. Two sources suggest this may be the case based on percentage of losses caused by drones.
· In an interview with Adam Kinzinger, Michael Weiss stated that 70% of Russian casualties is caused by Ukrainian drones.
· The Kiev Post reported 74% of casualties caused by Drones and cited a Russian study where up to 90% of causalities on the zero line were caused by drones.
Why is this important? Because 2 years ago most casualties were caused by artillery and supply of artillery ammunition has been an issue from time to time. Now drone production in Ukraine is significant, Ukraine controls this supply and has been very productive in this area. So 40% still looks feasible, just not very feasible.
Conclusion, the official losses are accurate and realistic
The required efficiency values, specially for the three equipment types suggests that the figures published by the MoD of Ukraine are accurate ad realistic. The tactics used by Russia would only add to the possibility that the personnel losses are also accurate and realistic. Perun even suggests that the Russian Army is divided into two types of forces of equal size. One that fights and one that dies, and the one that dies is likely where most of the casualties are recorded. The one that fights is given better equipment and more training and is a more difficult force to fight for the AFU.
Further Issues for Discussion
There are other elite brigades in the AFU (At least 11) and we did make any special adjustment for their required efficiency. They may have higher than average enemy loss figures compared to other brigades, and this adds weight to the official numbers being accurate and realistic.
We should note here that with the divided Russian Amry referred to by Perun, the AFU does need to focus on inflicting losses on the more experienced forces while being highly efficient on inflicting losses on the forces sent to die on the battlefield as drone fodder.
Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzR8BacYS6U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja6-espHVSE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/414th_Strike_UAV_Brigade
https://www.youtube.com/@MAGYARBIRDS/videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98j6oj0xzYk
https://adamkinzinger.substack.com/p/special-video-on-ukraine-with-expert
Image Credits
By This image is a work of a Ukrainian military or Ministry of Defense. According to the Article 10 of the Law of Ukraine on Copyright and Related rights this work is in the public domain within Ukraine and possibly in other jurisdictions because it is symbol or sign of government authorities, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations. - https://militaryland.net/ukraine/marine-corps/birds-of-magyar-battalion/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=145595771
By Олекса Руденко - Own work using: Офіційний сайт Міноборони України, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54073244
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