EXPLAINER: At 100 days, Russia-Ukraine war by the numbers

GENEVA — One hundred days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war has brought the world a near-daily drumbeat of gut wrenching scenes: Civilian corpses in the streets of Bucha; a blown-up theater in Mariupol; the chaos at a Kramatorsk train station in the wake of a Russian missile strike.Those images tell just a part of the overall picture of Europe’s worst armed conflict in decades. Here’s a look at some numbers and statistics that — while in flux and at times uncertain — shed further light on the death, destruction, displacement and economic havoc wrought by the war as it reaches this milestone with no end in sight.THE HUMAN TOLLNobody really knows how many combatants or civilians have died, and claims of casualties by government officials — who may sometimes be exaggerating or lowballing their figures for public relations reasons — are all but impossible to verify.Government officials, U.N. agencies and others who carry out the grim task of counting the dead don’t always get access to places where people were killed.And Moscow has released scant information about casualties among its forces and allies, and given no accounting of civilian deaths in areas under its control. In some places — such as the long-besieged city of Mariupol, potentially the war’s biggest killing field — Russian forces are accused of trying to cover up deaths and dumping bodies into mass graves, clouding the overall toll.With all those caveats, “at least tens of thousands” of Ukrainian civilians have died so far, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday in comments to Luxembourg’s parliament.In Mariupol alone, officials have reported over 21,000 civilian dead. Sievierodonetsk, a city in the eastern region of Luhansk that has become the focus of Russia’s offensive, has seen roughly 1,500 casualties, according to the mayor.Such estimates comprise both those killed by Russian strikes or troops and those who succumbed to secondary effects such as hunger and sickness as food supplies and health services collapsed.Zelenskyy said this week that 60 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are dying in combat every day, with about 500 more wounded.Russia’s last publicly released figures for its own forces came March 25, when a general told state media that 1,351 soldiers had been killed and 3,825 wounded.Ukraine and Western observers say the real number is much higher: Zelenskyy said Thursday that more than 30,000 Russian servicemen have died — “more than the Soviet Union lost in 10 years of the war in Afghanistan”; in late April, the British government estimated Russian losses at 15,000.Speaking on condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss intelligence matters, a Western official said Russia is “still taking casualties, but … in smaller numbers.” The official estimated that some 40,000 Russian troops have been wounded.In Moscow-backed separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine, authorities have reported over 1,300 fighters lost and nearly 7,500 wounded in the Donetsk region, along with 477 dead civilians and nearly 2,400 wounded; plus 29 civilians killed and 60 wounded in Luhansk.THE DEVASTATIONRelentless shelling, bombing and airstrikes have reduced large swaths of many cities and towns to rubble.Ukraine’s parliamentary commission on human rights says Russia’s military has destroyed almost 38,000 residential buildings, rendering about 220,000 people homeless.Nearly 1,900 educational facilities from kindergartens to grade schools to universities have been damaged, including 180 completely ruined.Other infrastructure losses include 300 car and 50 rail bridges, 500 factories and about 500 damaged hospitals, according to Ukrainian officials.