Estimates have a very high margin of error, but everything points to at least a hundred thousand deaths on each side.
The number of Russian soldiers killed in the war in Ukraine since the beginning of the year is said to have amounted to 86.000according to Kiev estimates released this Friday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Since January, Russia has also registered at least 59,000 seriously injured e more than 800 Russian military personnel were taken prisoner by Ukrainian forces, announced Zelensky, quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE.
The Ukrainian head of state released estimates of Russian casualties on social media after a meeting with the commander of the armed forces, Oleksandr Syrsky. Zelenskyy said in the message that Ukrainian troops were “achieving the defined objectives” in the border areas with Russia. Sumy regionin northeastern Ukraine. Russian troops have been trying to create a buffer zone in the Sumy area to keep the Ukrainian army away from Russian territory.
“We continue to destroy Russian troops and equipment of the occupiers also in other sectors” of the combat front, said Zelenskyy, who praised the work of drone operators, airborne forces and other assault troops.
Russian casualties will exceed Ukrainian ones
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, triggering the most serious armed conflict in Europe since World War II (1939-1945). The number of casualties from the war, both civilian and military, is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, admit that it will be very high.
Casualty information released by both parties to the conflict cannot be independently verified.
Mediazona/BBC Russian this month 352,000 Russian soldiers have died by the end of 2025. In January, CSIS estimated that Russia had suffered about 1.2 million military casualties — killed, injured and missing — between the start of the war and the end of last year, including 275 thousand to 325 thousand dead.
The same CSIS analysis estimates that Russian casualties outnumber Ukrainian ones in an approximate ratio of 2.5 to 1 or 2 to 1.
The British Ministry of Defense has primarily used the concept of casualties, not deaths, and its recent updates have put Russian losses at around 1.2 to 1.25 million dead and wounded since the start of the full-scale invasion. A British statement to the OSCE in April 2026 stated that Russia would have suffered around 420,000 casualties by 2025, including up to 200,000 deaths.
The Ukrainian estimate is typically higher — the Ukrainian General Staff on May 22, 2026 that Russia had lost 1,353,860 personnel since February 24, 2022 — but these are losses in an operational sense, not a death toll.
And on the Ukrainian side?
Here, the most cited reference is also CSIS: 500,000 to 600,000 Ukrainian military casualties between February 2022 and December 2025, including 100 thousand to 140 thousand dead.
Zelenskyy says the number is much lower and points to the death of around 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers in total since the start of the war, citing .
And civilians?
As of April 2026, the UN mission has recorded, since February 24, 2022, at least 60,659 civilian casualties in Ukraine, of which 15,850 dead and 44,809 injured. But the UN emphasizes that the real number is probably much higher, mainly due to a lack of access and verification in places like Mariupol and other areas of intense fighting at the beginning of the invasion.
