Heads up, this is going to be a morbid comment but additional information is needed to understand what is going on with this post. tl;dr: We won’t really ever know the actual casualties of war.

MediaZona only counts verified deaths, the last I checked. This is not accurate or inaccurate, but is not the entire picture. War doesn’t always allow for verification.

To clarify the wall of conflicting data, a “casualty” is typically any soldier that is permanently out of commission, fatal or non-fatal. A common ratio used is 1:3 for death vs non-fatal casualty, but this is variable based on the conflict and the capabilities of the countries involved. Casualties may include equipment losses but this is usually based on country.

Official numbers, when released, almost always overstate enemy casualties and understate losses. This is just how propaganda works. (Propaganda is a wartime inevitability.)

To get something close to a realistic number, pick a loss ratio you think is accurate, divide high estimate numbers and multiply low estimates. Average out the results between all sources you think are reliable.

At the end of the day, you have a number based on wartime estimates with a vague attempt to filter out propaganda inflation. Real casualties will not be known for years after the conflict is over, if ever.

I went to the trouble to write this because wagging fingers at any specific data source is pointless. Casualty counts are not always intentional misinformation but are almost always wildly inaccurate and is yet another factor in the fog of war.