Four years later, Russia has accumulated (many) more casualties than Ukraine

Russian casualties currently stand at between 1.1 and 1.4 million soldiers, of which between 230,000 and 430,000 have died, according to an analysis by the Economist

On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin gave the order for Russia to invade Ukraine, with the promise that this would happen quickly. Four years later, the scenario is very different: the conflict continues, the human costs increase and territorial gains remain small for Moscow.

The most recent estimates, based on official data, independent analyzes and developed statistical models, point to a major imbalance in military losses. Russia will be suffering significantly more casualties than Ukraine, while making limited progress on the ground.

To calculate Russian losses, the newspaper gathered credible assessments from intelligence agencies, defense officials and independent investigators. These numbers were crossed with data collected through monitoring of the conflict, including satellite images that make it possible to measure the daily intensity of the fighting. The result is an aggregate estimate of the evolution of deaths throughout the war.

According to the same calculation, Russian casualties are currently between 1.1 and 1.4 million soldiers, of which between 230,000 and 430,000 died. In proportional terms, this could mean that one in every 25 Russian men aged 18 to 49 has been killed or seriously injured since the start of the large-scale invasion.

On the Ukrainian side, available data is scarcer. An estimate released on January 27 by the CSIS think tank indicated that, by December, Ukraine would have recorded around 600,000 casualties, including between 100,000 and 140,000 deaths.

Although the absolute number is lower than Russia’s, the relative impact is high: equivalent to about one in every 16 Ukrainian men of military age before the war. These figures do not include civilian victims, whose accounting is even more uncertain.

Still according to the same analysis, in 2025 Russia advanced only 0.83% of Ukrainian territory, the largest annual gain since the start of the war. Since May 2022, when Moscow raised its flag in Mariupol, no major city has been conquered on Ukrainian territory.