Project #2: Tableau Story Visualization of Russian Federation Losses During the Full-Scale Russo-Ukrainian War
Table of Contents
Project Summary
Given the one-year anniversary of the full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine, I decided to visualize the losses of the Russian Army sustained over the course of the past year using Tableau Public. A rather morbid topic, but an important one that should be talked about. As of the writing of this post, 150,000 is the official Western total of Russian KIA, with approximately double that being wounded. This is over the course of only 1 year, as opposed to the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan which lasted over 9 years and resulted in less than 20,000 casualties. It's suspected that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are suffering similar losses to that of the Russian Army. And for what, the question must be begged. Obviously the Ukrainians have their motive to defend their homes and families. But what can be said about the Russians? A lot, but I'll leave that discussion for another time and place. I'll focus on the scope of military sacrifice they've made in their unprovoked invasion here instead.
My deliverable is the following Tableau Story that includes four individual worksheets:
- Bar Graph - Visually Confirmed Losses of Russian Federation Equipment
- Pie Graph - Selected Visually Confirmed Losses of Russian Federation Ground Equipment by Type
- Tree Map - Selected Visually Confirmed Losses of Russian Federation Ground Equipment by Model
- Line Graph - Daily KIA of Russian Federation In the First Year of Full-Scale War
Disclaimer
Given the subject matter I wanted to include a disclaimer to say the following: I have no military background. The thoughts expressed here are merely my own opinion and I would not qualify them as any substantive data analysis conclusions. The purpose of this project was to afford me experience with visualizations in Tableau Public and nothing more. Anything that can be misconstrued as an analysis is simply my thinking out loud and musing on observations I thought interesting to make after a quick overview of my completed visualizations. Under a complete data analysis workflow, I would have been more rigorous with cleaning the data that I presented and would provide quantitative metrics for any conclusions I thought worthwhile highlighting. The topic was chosen because it's timely and affects me as someone with Russian and Ukrainian origins.
Learning Outcomes
Completing my visualization afforded me with the following skills gained:
- Uploading multiple data sources into Tableau for use in one story
- Creating multi-type visualizations of various data types such as bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts and tree maps
- Editing these visualizations to include lines of best fit, annotations, range limits, and color-coding in order to increase readability and comprehension
- Formatting know-how to make each visualization consistent and aesthetically coherent
Data Sources
Two data sources were used for this exercise:
Story Discussion by Worksheet
Visualizations of data exist in order to allow the data to tell a story. Unfortunately, the story told here is a tragic one as it lays bare the consequences of autocracy and a depoliticized public. My intention with creating three graphs detailing equipment losses was to show the scale of destruction of Russian military equipment, both in an absolute and comparative sense. Still, the numbers are so large that it's difficult to visualize 1,500+ tanks or 2,200+ trucks. I did my best to drive it home by using the pie graph and the tree map, which include range limitations in order to account for smaller data points.
For my last worksheet, the line graph of daily KIAs, I wanted to illustrate that the conflict was not winding down and was in fact getting into a much more intense and violent phase. This is why I included a percentile calculation for the line and why I included a line of best fit. Both metrics illustrate that daily KIA casualties have been steadily increasing for Russia ever since September of 2022 when Ukraine began a number of their counteroffensives to great success.
Bar Graph - Visually Confirmed Losses of Russian Federation Equipment
The first worksheet, the bar graph, illustrates 23 types of military equipment sorted by magnitude of loss. Unsurprisingly, trucks and automobiles in general suffer the highest rate of destruction. They are often targeted on the battlefield due to the fact that they are used for transporting fuel and ammunition, without which any meaningful offense or defense cannot be sustained. They are followed by Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs), Tanks and Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) in that order. Now IFVs and Tanks can actually fall under the term AFV. But in the context of the datasets I am using for my visualization, they're differentiated out into their own categories due to the extensive size of their loss. And the AFV category is used as a catch-all for other armored vehicles with offensive or defensive capabilities.
It was personally surprising to me to see that that self-propelled artillery has had a higher loss rate than towed artillery. I had assumed that the Russian Army had much more towed artillery deployed and that self-propelled artillery is a more difficult target to hit.
The fact that self-propelled artillery is burnt up at twice the rate of towed artillery can be due to a number of factors. But none of which I can confidently say are the lead cause since I don't have the necessary data to validate my guesses. It could be due to the fact that self-propelled artillery is targeted more often due to it's inherent advantages over towed artillery. It's able to shoot-and-scoot and be a bit more nimble in choosing from which positions it fires, thus being more of a threat if I'm deducing it's advantages correctly. It could also be that the Russian MOD is fielding it's more sophisticated artillery systems in greater numbers in order to try to advance quicker, given that their military doctrine focuses on a heavy dependency on artillery. It's more than likely a combination of factors that can't be readily assessed with open-source data but it was an interesting point to mention nonetheless.
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Pie Graph - Selected Visually Confirmed Losses of Russian Federation Ground Equipment by Type
This part of my story visualization is a pie graph (chart) delineating losses by equipment type. It tells a similar story to that of the bar graph but instead as a ratio of particular equipment type lost to the tallied total equipment loss as a whole. The use-case for this worksheet is debatable given that it does occupy a similar purpose to that of the bar graph and the fact that it can lead to an apples-to-oranges type of comparison. After all, the loss of one tank and it's crew can have a much more prominent impact on operations than the loss of of a jeep.
But nonetheless, I do think it drives home not only the scale of the conflict but also the effectiveness of modern anti-armor weapons such as ATGMs against what's mostly Cold War era armor. Armor is still needed to take cities and villages and the Russian Army has not been shy to use theirs, especially at the start of the invasion. It follows that on a per-type basis that it'd suffer a very high loss rate in a large and mostly flat region such as Southern and Eastern Ukraine.
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Tree Map - Selected Visually Confirmed Losses of Russian Federation Ground Equipment by Model
As someone with an interest in military vehicles, this tree map was likely my favorite part of the visualization. It's essentially a "drilled down" version of the first two charts. It's composed of seven groupings dictated by equipment type, in which the equipment is further stratified by model. Just as the pie graph, I had to set some range restrictions in order to increase the readability. The highest losses here are shown to be the BMP-2K IFV and the 6x6 KamAZ truck.
The BMP-2K is a variant of the BMP-2 that has been produced since 1980. The K denotes that it is a command variant fitted with a suite of antennas unavailable to the other versions. It's possible that these antennas make the BMP-2K an attractive target on the battlefield, at 708 losses confirmed.
The 6x6 KamAZ (as specified in the dataset - it's likely that this is the KamAZ-5350) is one of the Russian Army's main transport trucks, in conjunction with the Ural-4320. The loss rates for both are similar with 657 being lost for the former and 590 for the later. As far as I am aware, both are fairly similar vehicles in purpose and specifications. The 5350 entered service in 2003 and the 4320 in 1976. The 4320 has a slightly larger wheelbase and therefore has a larger load capacity. The 5350 and KamAZ designs in general are less popular amongst the Russian troops due to the placement of the engine and transmission system internals. It is designed in such a way that driving over a mine in the 5350 is more often fatal as opposed to the 4320 if all things are kept equal. In the 5350, the blast is directly beneath the cab while with the 4320 it's more so underneath the engine compartment. Not saying that this is an explanation of the numbers, but it is an interesting bit of information I've gleaned from first-hand sources.
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Line Graph - Daily KIA of Russian Federation In the First Year of Full-Scale War
This line graph includes annotations not to imply false causation as a result of potentially visible correlations, but to instead give the idea of what was going on in the war at a particular time. That is why I included a number of Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians, as I think that's important to highlight and remember. Unfortunately, this results in a very crowded presentation so I've chosen to include this chart separate from the embedded feature as well, which can be viewed in full on Tableau Public's website. I've gone ahead and done this for all charts to make page navigation easier.
The real takeaway from this graph is that the war is not subsiding or winding down. It's doing the opposite, and that follows with the doubling-down that the Kremlin has been doing militarily, politically and diplomatically. Casualties have been climbing since September of 2022 and are currently at an average above 500 KIA daily, having been at this level essentially since December 2022. This is approximately double the daily KIA rate when looking at it prior to September 2022.
This graph also shows off some data artifacts from the first month or so of the full-scale war. The maximums of the line exist here, potentially due to the fact of how the invasion was structured with assaults on Ukraine from all directions. There's also about 5 days worth of missing data in March, which I am not sure how to explain at the given moment. I considered not starting from the first day of the invasion due to the fact that it's clearly inconsistent with the remaining data. Ultimately though I decided to include these values as-is to give a fuller picture of the losses that were sustained in the first few days.
Conclusion
As mentioned above, any substantive and defensible conclusions regarding military strategy can't really be garnered from this data at least to my limited knowledge. What's clear from this Tableau Story is what's been clear to those following the war: it's getting worse. That's why it highlights the need for Western weapons to continue to be supplied to Ukraine, in order to give them the tools necessary to continue defending themselves from this increasing aggression. This is a moral commitment that the West needs to uphold because without it, the foundational justifications for Western society and forms of government will cease to exist. After all, what is the value in democratic institutions if they cannot defend the victim of autocratic imperialism? Ukraine only wants lasting peace, stability and prosperity. But it's clear that none of this is possible with Russia as a potential victor.
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