Date: Wednesday, 28 October 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/finnish-defense-university-study
https://theduran.com/finnish-defense-university-study-finds-russia-likely-to-win-
Finnish Defense University Study Finds Russia Likely to Win Against Ukraine
27 October 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
This study, "IRRETRIEVABLE LOSSES: ESTIMATING CASUALTIES ON THE RURRO-UKRAINE WAR”, by Alexander Grable, is the latest and most thorough analysis to-date on the matter; and, so, I present here the following excerpts from it, as a summary of it:
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https://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/195520/Russia%20Seminar%20publication%202026_web.pdf
National Defense University of Finland, Russia’s War Against Ukraine: Russia’s Future Military Development, Pentti Forsström (ed.), 2026
By Alexander Grable, Ch. 12: "IRRETRIEVABLE LOSSES: ESTIMATING CASUALTIES ON THE RURRO-UKRAINE WAR”, pp. 149-174
12
IRRETRIEVABLE LOSSES: ESTIMATING CASUALTIES ON THE RUSSO-UKRAINE
WAR
Alexander Grable1
The presentation by Alexander Grable in the Russia Seminar 2026 can be found on
the FNDU YouTube-channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArXG6C52lQ0 starting from 2:45:44 [but it’s almost inaudible until 2:47:30 — he was put up to speak before his mike was turned on].
Abstract
This article, on the basis of open-source information, critically examines the coverage in the public domain of estimates of losses on both sides in the Russo-Ukraine War (2022-present). Public discourse prevailing in the West has framed the conflict as a war of attrition with an exchange ratio favorable to Ukraine that is effectively degrading Russian military power. This article scrutinizes these estimates of Russian losses, noting flaws that have probably inflated them. In turn, publicly available Western estimates of Ukrainian losses appear likely to be underestimated, based on an evaluation of open-source information, coupled with observable conduct of the fighting. This article argues that the policy of NATO countries on the Russo-Ukraine war needs to adjust to reflect what is more likely happening on the battlefield and its impact on the balance of opposing forces.
…
Total Russian KIA may well be even less than the confirmed total for Mediazona. [In other words: Not ONLY are the widely-cited-in-the-West Mediazona estimates of the total Russian dead unrealistically high, but EVEN Mediazona’s ‘CONFIRMED’ COUNT of Russian dead is probably higher than the actual number of Russians dead in this war.]
Assuming the Russians have a military medical system no more efficient than the US Military’s in Vietnam, thereby making allowance for a challenging battlefield environment, this allows for a demonstration of possible Russian KIA based on this figure, set out in Table 3 below: Estimated Russian KIA based on amputees up to 30 June 2024 Input: Russian Amputees Multiplier: US Vietnam KIA to amputee ratio (11.02) Output: Estimated KIA Database from RFE/RL: 3,200 X 11.02 35,264 Table 3: Estimated Russian KIA based on amputees up to 30 June 2024
It is worth highlighting here as well that the ratio in the exchange of the bodies of fallen soldiers between Russia and Ukraine, is 12.46 Ukrainian fallen for every Russian, and also meshes with the amputee information.138
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Back to the Ukrainians, beyond mobilization criteria and amputees, there are additional anecdotal pieces of evidence that point in the same direction. First, the number of photos of growing cemeteries in Ukraine.139 These were not imaginings of Russian pro-war accounts. Kyiv alone added 266 hectares to its war cemetery.140Lviv disinterred dead from WWII to bury dead from the current war.141A second was provided by the reporter for The Atlantic, Luke Mogelson, who revealed how Ukrainian infantry companies even by May 2023 had often effectively been ‘killed off’ more than once with only a handful of surviving pre-war soldiers. The churn over became worse with each successive infusion of new, and hastily trained replacements who sometimes only received four weeks training.142 By April 2024 all the pre-war members of the company were KIA or incapacitated. Very likely, the personnel had gone through several more churns in the meantime.143 To note, this phenomenon had been observable since June 2022.144 Another example was a statement by the Poltava mobilization authorities on 15 September 2023 that for every 100 conscripted in 2022, typically only 10-20 remained fighting fit with the rest KIA or seriously wounded.145 Finally, on 20 November 2025 Vadym Ivchenko, a member of the Rada’s National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee stated that 500,000 Ukrainian servicemen were KIA and that even this was a “hypothetical, it could be higher.”146 In view of all the above, Vershinin’s estimate of 769,000 Ukrainian KIA up to 31 March 2025 is, horrifyingly, a not unrealistic estimate.147 Under these trying circumstances, facing an enemy with greater resources of firepower as well as manpower, it is to the everlasting credit of Ukrainian soldiers that they have endured as skillfully and tenaciously as they have.
Conclusion
What then is the balance? The evidence presented demonstrates that Russian KIA/MIA are very probably less than heretofore estimated by most sources, and Ukrainian losses are very probably higher than heretofore estimated by most sources. Moreover, the evidence presented in this article very strongly suggests that Ukrainian losses in KIA/MIA are higher than Russian losses, both relatively and absolutely. Ukraine, with a much smaller population, is quite probably on the wrong side of the attritional gradient, and is losing the war. This puts the sustainability of its combat effectiveness over the current broad front at risk. On this trajectory, Ukraine is unlikely to prevail, and Russia may achieve the upper hand. As Vershinin has argued, Ukraine is running out of room in negotiations as it loses its manpower. Given the critical support provided by NATO, this also means NATO militaries might need to re-evaluate their thinking about the conduct of the war.
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MY COMMENTS:
So, I asked Chat GPT:
“How predictive are killed-in-action ratios for the two sides in a war, relatve to determining the ultimate winner? For example, in WW2, the Germans killed 14,685,593 Russians but Germany lost only 7,300,000 on both the Eastern and Western fronts; so, vastly more Russian soldiers were killed by Germany than German soldiers were killed by Russia -- yet Russia defeated Germany.”
How Predictive Are Killed-in-Action Ratios of Who Will Win a War?
The ratio of soldiers killed on the opposing sides is an imperfect predictor of which side will ultimately win a war. A country can inflict substantially more casualties than it suffers and nevertheless lose the war.
Your example of Germany versus the Soviet Union in World War II illustrates an important distinction between two measures of military success:
These are fundamentally different measures. A military can excel at the first while failing at the second.
…
My conclusion
Killed-in-action ratios have some predictive value, but there is insufficient evidence to quantify that value reliably for entire wars.
Your World War II example illustrates why the distinction matters.
Germany was highly effective at inflicting military casualties, but the Soviet Union, supported by the wider Allied war effort [ESPECIALLY the supply of weaponry — such as 14,800 combat aircraft and 346,000 metric tons of explosives — trucks, locomotives, railway equipment, food, fuel, industrial machinery, and raw materials, to the Soviet Union, by FDR, under his Lend-Lease Act], ultimately proved more capable of sustaining the war and defeating Germany.
The decisive variable was not simply the number of enemy soldiers killed. It was the cumulative effect of the fighting on each side's ability to achieve its objectives.
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Consequently: I (Eric Zuesse) dismiss all of the kill-ratios in comparison to the staying-power of each of the two sides, which — at least until now — has favored Russia against all of the U.S. and its stooge-regimes throughout Europe and especially in Ukraine itself (where morale is very bad, due to the universally recognized corruptness of its government, and to the obviously deplorable results of its refusal to negotiate with Russia). Moreover, Putin’s approval-ratings from Russians are enormously higher than the approval-numbers for Zelensky are from Ukrainians; and, so, the fall of Zelensky’s government is far likelier than is the fall of Putin’s. Those factors, far more than the kill-ratio comparisons, are the basis of my views upon the matter.
However, I do not discount the rising pressures from the Russian public to seek a premature negotiated end to this war. Even Konstantin Malofeev, the founder of Russia’s Tsargrad TV Channel, headlined on October 17th, “The Central Bank Must Go”, and opened with “The Russian economy has entered a new crisis, and everyone will feel the consequences. In the first half of 2026, fixed capital investment in Russia fell by 9.9% in real terms. The stock market capitalization-to-GDP ratio fell to 20%. The share of defaults in the market has almost doubled. The stock market is like an out-of-control airplane—or, worse, hijacked by terrorists. When the stock market collapses, production declines, unemployment rises, and incomes fall. Even with a brilliant idea, starting a new business is impossible. Urgent and radical measures are needed to break the downward spiral.” If Russia’s billionaires controlled Russia’s Government like America’s billionaires control America’s Government, then those stock-market factors could affect this war’s outcome, but they don’t.
Russia’s productive capacity would decline, and this might have some impact upon military production, but on 9 October 2026 the Bank of Finland published its study “Russia’s growth slows further, government finances remain in the red” but concluded that Russia has sufficient resources to finance and produce what it needs to continue the war for the foreseeable future, nonetheless. Russia’s war-effort won’t be able to be attritted financially. By contrast, Ukraine’s war-effort would end abruptly the moment that America and its stooge-regimes stopped funding it and supplying it with weapons, satellite-intelligence, etc. At least until now, Russia’s war-production has considerably outpaced all of NATO’s. The chances that this will change appear to be remote.
Consequently, I predict that the chances of the U.S. regime winning its proxy-war against Russia by using Ukraine as its battering-ram are slim-to-none. The sooner that the U.S. empire withdraws from it, the better will be the outcome especially for Ukrainians, but also for everyone (except perhaps the empire’s billionaires, who profit from its continuance).
Mark Sleboda, one of the best public geostrategic analysts, thinks that no matter how bad things will get for Russia’s stock markets as a result of this war, things are far worse for the NATO economies, and that the outcome of the war will be decided when America’s European ‘allies’ (colonies) will finally be economically forced to quit it. Here is how he viewed the matter, in his October 23rd interview with “The Peacemonger,” titled “Mark Sleboda on Europe’s Collapse and Ukraine Permanent War”, at
https://marksleboda.substack.com/p/europes-collapse-and-forever-war
15:22
And there's two very different conceptions of what Ukraine is and what it means to be a Ukrainian between East and West Ukraine. And it was precariously balanced in Ukrainian politics uh, both internally uh, and geopolitically, this balance between
15:42
East and West. And as long as Ukraine maintained that neutrality they could survive as a as a state. Even though there was a lot of animosity politically and otherwise between East and West Ukraine. And um, my wife is from Crimea. Uh, and we have family in um,
16:03
there in Simferopol, but also uh, across East Ukraine in Kharkiv and Odessa and and Donetsk. And so I'm well familiar. There used to be before this all started, uh, there were literally science fiction conventions in Ukraine about authors who wrote books about the future civil war in Ukraine because
16:32
that was already understood that that was going to happen. That that was that tension between East and West Ukraine. And and what Ukraine was and should be was was baked in. So, that's that's one of the reasons why I think that it it simply can't ever exist in anything even approximating the
16:56
form that it did. So, uh, it's it's going to go on for a long time. As long as the uh, they can keep pumping money and arms into it. And possibly even, you know, after that. Even after that dies down. But what Russia is doing right now, it's new long-range re- you know,
17:17
retaliatory strike campaign against the Odessa and the other Black Sea and Danube ports and against the economics and energy and logistics of Ukraine as a whole. That is really I think that is doing more to end this conflict quicker and more assuredly than anything that
17:44
Russia has done since 2022. And that's going to make it very difficult for the Europeans to continue the support. I mean, they've been told now by Zelenskyy that they need to cough up another 70 billion euros just for the rest of this year and then another 155 billion
18:08
euros for next year on top of that. And I don't know where that money The Europeans don't know where that money is coming from. They never even gave them the the 90 billion euros that they were supposed to because they couldn't come up with it.
18:24
Attrition warfare, drones, and the end of manoeuvre
18:26
Um and they're already reaching out to Canada and South Korea and the UK and we know the UK doesn't have any money [laughter] to be handing them either. So, this is this is where I think I think that there is a It's not certainly not a certainty, but there is a if people want to to hope for
18:50
a collapse I've never been a big fan of a big sea collapse. I think people have been predicting all the Kiev regime can't continue every two months since 2022 and I I think that's well-meaning cheerleading, but it's it's cheerleading and it's it's not done any real service. Um
19:11
that there's a much bigger chance of a little “c" collapse or a crumbling economically and socially than there is any type of uh military collapse on the front line. And a lot of that is really just due to the way that the revolution in warfare on the battlefield that has occurred in the
19:40
last few years since this conflict started uh with uh drones um AI uh 24/7 uh absolute, you know, panopticon uh satellite and drone and and AWACS surveillance uh surprise uh at at anything above the immediate tactical level is absolutely impossible. Uh precision strikes uh
20:07
coupled with that uh surveillance mean that maneuver warfare is dead. It is a relic of the past. Um and everything now is um you know, heavily focused on really combat pairs is is what [clears throat] they they're using, the infiltration tactics that both sides are
20:29
using because it's the only thing that has on foot that has a chance of evading the the intensity of the drone uh saturation of the battlefields uh that they just become kill zones. Uh and no vehicle can survive there uh for long. And these drones are cheap. Uh so that even with decreasing levels of
20:55
support they can be maintained for a long time. Uh you know, often with Chinese components. That's where the Kiev regime assembles their drones from. Right? They're they're bought from the Europeans who buy them from Malaysia or some other third-party countries and
21:13
they receive some amount of assembly in Europe and they're finished up in these you know artisanal underground workshops. They're certainly not military factories, but they've got several hundred of them, you know, at any given time. Many of them now underground. Assembling
21:33
this this this can be continued and it will force Russia to go building to building, house to house on a basically a foot you know, small combat pairs on foot basis. It's it's not the tank Blitzkrieg encirclement warfare that we saw in World War II or you know, if if you want
21:59
to have something equally absurd talk about, you know, the US victory in Iraq in 2003. Even that you know, as as mismatched as that was with Iraq having no support, you know, and the CIA actually doing the biggest part of that conflict by getting most of the Iraqi military to lay down
22:21
their arms before any conflict. They're they're not comparisons. We're we're in a completely different paradigm now. And that's easily being shown across the Middle East where the Israelis are still playing catch-up. And yet Hezbollah and Ansar Allah, the Houthis are very quick adapters.
22:44
They've learned the lessons of what's going on in Ukraine. How Hezbollah suddenly became so proficient in using fiber optic cable drones to hit Merkava tanks. I'm I'm sure there must be some type of linkage there with Russia even if indirect through Iran because uh they're
23:06
they're certainly showing abilities that certainly NATO countries haven't internalized into their military yet. >> Yeah, I agree and and talking about briefly to Ukraine I actually completely agree with you. I've been saying for a long time that actually it's the politics of Europe
23:20
Why European politics will decide the war
23:22
that will ultimately decide the fate of the war and not what's happening in the battle space because of the very particular factors that you just outlined in in sort of great detail and I think it's for that reason that I've always also had in parallel the sense that that
23:39
Russia is just playing it long. I mean I think Putin gave the Russian armed forces until the autumn of next year to kind of paint out the rest of the Donetsk. There's absolutely no hurry going on on the Russian side. They're just happy obliterating you know, the political and the economic
23:57
will in Europe to kind of continue propping up uh Zelenskyy's regime. I mean that's that appears to be their approach as far as I can see it. People in the Western mainstream media focus on the fact that very little ground is changing hands on the front line. Well, that's not the game as far
24:14
as I can see it. That's not the game at all and what we see happening in France, what we see happening in Germany you don't yet see happening in the UK but there's every potential for it to happen over the next couple of years is just a part of that I I think. >> I I think it has always been an
24:29
attrition war. And and the fact that the Western media is able to uh
24:34
Russia’s economic boom and attrition against Europe
24:35
you know, concentrate on you know, in relative terms how little land has exchanged hand as if this was a territorial conflict has allowed them to to you know, spin this propaganda narrative for years now. But the attrition war is not only taking place on the battlefield
24:58
And it's not only taking place in the long-range strike campaign now, but I believe that Russia is waging an attrition war against the European economies. Um I mean, Russia didn't set out to do that, but that is the way that the game has
25:16
unfolded. And Russia can see what is happening to the European economies, the deindustrialization of Germany, uh the the uh the just simply a general economic and social collapse in the UK and France. And that is not happening in Russia. Uh you know, that is something that is
25:38
still very much a a part of of Western, you know, propaganda, but the Russian economy is doing quite well. In fact, um I'm I'm not the only one has argued that the decoupling from the West has been the absolute best thing for Russian economy and sovereignty uh since this conflict began.
26:02
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
