Approaching 2 million: the monstrous number of victims in the war in Ukraine

About 1.2 million Russian soldiers have been killed, wounded or missing since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago – an unprecedented casualty rate for a military power since World War II, according to a new report by the prestigious international research institute CSIS. According to the report, the total number of victims in the conflict is approaching 2 million, and this is expected to be reached this spring.

Russia and Ukraine do not release official, full figures on casualty numbers, and CSIS’s estimate is based on independent analysis, information analyzed by the BBC, British government estimates and interviews with other officials. According to the same analysis, the number of Ukrainian casualties is about 500,000 to 600,000 dead, wounded and missing – compared to about 1.2 million on the Russian side. On the Russian side, up to 325,000 deaths were recorded, compared to up to 140,000 deaths on the Ukrainian side.

“The data indicate that Russia is far from victorious,” write the authors of the report, according to which the heavy human cost has yielded only limited territorial gains: since 2022, Russia has increased the territory of Ukraine under its control by only about 12%.

For comparison, the United States lost about 57,000 soldiers in the Korean War and about 47,000 in the Vietnam War. Russian losses in Ukraine are 5 times higher than the total losses of Russia and the Soviet Union in all wars since World War II, including the war in Afghanistan and the two wars in Chechnya.

The report was published less than a month before the four-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and at a time when there is no breakthrough towards an agreement that will end the war, despite the efforts of the White House. Despite the data, the Trump administration consistently referred to Russia as the winner of the war, and President Trump himself said that he had the upper hand.