re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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You don't think Russia could turn Kyiv to rubble? They've been incredibly restrained when it comes to hitting civilian targets. Even when they hit a civilian building full of military equipment or troops...the whole western world bleeds for a week. Targets in Odessa were hammered for four straight nights last week and I don't recall seeing that a single civilian was killed. Russia hasn't even used an ODAB-500 bomb yet and they have a ton of them.

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While it is true they haven't targeted heavily populated civilian structures en masse, we have seen them target infrastructure that civilians are dependent on repeatedly far more than Ukraine.

The follow on effects from such a campaign is not something that has been analysed in depth yet but when it is the conclusions will likely show casualties caused by it directly, and indirectly, were not insignificant.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/06/ukraine-civilian-casualty-update-5-june-2023

Also we won't know until after the war the true civilian casualty scope as there are far too many variables for any accurate measure to be made yet. While the below UN report doesn't differentiate who inflicted the casualties, from my outlook none of them would have likely died in this way if Russia had not invaded.

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From 24 February 2022, which marked the start of the large-scale armed attack by the Russian Federation, to 4 June 2023, OHCHR recorded 24,425 civilian casualties in the country: 8,983 killed and 15,442 injured. This included:

19,682 casualties (6,979 killed and 12,703 injured) in territory controlled by the Government when casualties occurred:

In Donetsk and Luhansk regions: 9,877 casualties (4,081 killed and 5,796 injured); and
In other regions[2]: 9,805 casualties (2,898 killed and 6,907 injured).|

4,743 casualties (2,004 killed and 2,739 injured) in territory occupied by the Russian Federation when casualties occurred:

In Donetsk and Luhansk regions: 3,202 casualties (716 killed and 2,486 injured); and
In other regions[3]: 1,541 casualties (1,288 killed and 253 injured).

OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Mariupol (Donetsk region), Lysychansk, Popasna, and Sievierodonetsk (Luhansk region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties.

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If we take just the likely conservative civilian deaths inflicted indicated above on Ukraine held territory up till June 4th 2023 then it is over 13 deaths per day.

For comparison, while a different form of conflict, the number of civilians killed on both sides from April 2014 - December 2021 due to the Donbass war was 3404 or 1.2 a day. The bulk of these casualties occurred in the first 20 months (2969) and includes the 298 passengers killed in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Civilian casualties for both sides had been significantly decreasing for years following the Minsk II agreements and between July 2019 till December 2021 (914 days) active casualties (direct fire, shelling, UAV) were at 104 for both sides 0r 0.12 a day.

Based on these figures alone, Russia's claims of protecting lives via their invasion is completely invalidated as by their own actions they have caused many orders of magnitude more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas_(2014%E2%80%932022)

https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf

Yes I know I have used both U.N. and Wikipedia sources - take it as you will, it is used for reference purposes on my end.