Deaths in Gaza and Ukraine
Peter Rodgers writes in the above article that the UN states 10,582 Ukrainian civilians were killed in the two-year period to February 2024, while barely six months into the Gaza war 31,000 plus Palestinians have died at the hands of the IDF (which includes a disputed number of Hamas fighters). The scale of death and destruction in Gaza is horrific, but this comparison is incorrect and diminishes the impact of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
The U.N. has stated several times that its figure of verified deaths is just the “tip of the iceberg” because Russia has not allowed it or other investigators into areas it occupies, which is where most civilian deaths have occurred. As I note in a recent article in The Conversation (22 February) tens of thousands died just in the almost completely destroyed city of Mariupol, probably 50-80,000. Murders have been going on for two years in the occupied territories in what the UN describes as a “stifling climate of fear”. The likely full civilian toll could well exceed 100,000. Moreover, tens of thousands of ordinary Ukrainian civilians have died in uniform after volunteering to defend their country from an illegal, unprovoked invasion.
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