The number of Russian military casualties in Eastern Ukraine took center stage on Tuesday at a Congressional hearing, as a high-ranking State Department official revealed US intelligence on the matter and a bipartisan coalition of Senators called on the administration to help Kiev increase Moscow’s body count—a move that some Russian dissidents have said could backfire in the country’s court of public opinion.
About four or five hundred Russian soldiers have been killed in action in Ukraine according to American intelligence, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).
Though the figures are roughly consistent with estimates published in recent months, the highest ranking Republican legislator on diplomatic issues expressed bewilderment.
“The numbers, I thought, were substantially higher than that,” Corker said. “Under a thousand?”
Nuland remarked that it was difficult to ascertain an accurate estimation with great certainty “given Russia’s efforts to mask its dead.”
“If we have a better number for you in the future, we’ll come back to you,” she added.
Corker launched the inquiry as part of a line of questioning on US military assistance to Kiev—aid which he and other senators described as inadequate.
Citing allegations that separatists backed by Moscow are violating the latest ceasefire agreement signed last month in Minsk, the lawmakers harangued Nuland and other administration witnesses about weapons shipments, touting lines about “demonstrating weakness” while “echoing the frustration” of one another.
“It feels like they’re playing footsie with Russia,” Corker said of the administration, noting that it has publicly claimed it would consider arming Kiev. “There’s something else that’s happening, they’re not really committed to this.”
Those sentiments were repeated across the aisle, albeit in less visual and accusatory terms. The committee’s embattled ranking member, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), called on the administration to “fully implement measures in the Ukraine Freedom Support Act,” which, he noted, passed both houses by unanimous consent and was signed into law late last year.
“It authorizes the President to provide much needed military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and it imposes additional sanctions against Russia. This legislation was necessary in December and it is certainly necessary today,” he stated.
Though the sabre-rattling occurred amid repeated claims by committee members that bolstering Ukrainian military capabilities would complement efforts toward a diplomatic resolution, that policy has recently been questioned by dissidents within Russia itself—those who legislators employing the most bellicose rhetoric often claim to speak out for.
Indeed, despite the Kremlin’s hamfisted social media-age effort to control information about its soldiers killed in Luhansk and Donetsk, Russians appear aware of what’s happening and are none too pleased. One poll conducted by The Levada Center–a Moscow-based research institution that has an adversarial relationship with Putin’s United Russia party–found that only 13 percent of Russians would voluntarily send their sons to fight in Ukraine.
But that percentage could prove rather dynamic should the US up its support for Ukrainian security forces. As The Washington Post reported Sunday, anti-American sentiment in Russia has skyrocketed to reach historic highs. More than four in five Russians have a “negative general attitude toward the United States,” according to Levada—a ratio that has increased roughly four-fold in the past three years.
“The anti-Western anger stands to grow even stronger if President Obama decides to send lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian military, as he has been considering,” The Post noted, adding that “even some of Putin’s toughest critics say they cannot support that proposal, since the cost is the lives of their nation’s soldiers.”
The report was raised in the hearing by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who hinted that Russia’s official policy could make that line of reasoning difficult to support—as if Russians aren’t aware of its state’s approach to freedom of information.
“Putin says there are no Russian troops in Ukraine. Therefore, if that’s true, he has nothing to worry about,” he said.
Others were more direct in having already made up their minds on the effects–or lack thereof–of deepened US intervention.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) brought up recent discussions she held with Ukrainian parliamentarians about concerns the administration and Western European allies have had, and relaying their doubts “that the conflict could be escalated.” She said the argument left an impression on her.
“I don’t buy this argument that supplying the Ukrainians with defensive weapons is gonna provoke Putin,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) also remarked. “We’re already in for a pretty significant commitment, as it is.”
