Total casualties Ukrainian estimates of Russian military losses tended to be high, while Russian estimates of their own losses tended to be low. Combat deaths can be inferred from a variety of sources, including
satellite imagery and video image of military actions. According to a researcher at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at
Uppsala University in Sweden, regarding Russian military losses, Ukraine engaged in a misinformation campaign to boost morale and Western media were generally happy to accept its claims, while Russia was "probably" downplaying its own casualties. Ukraine also tended to be quieter about its own military fatalities. According to
BBC News, Ukrainian claims of Russian fatalities included the injured as well. Western countries emphasized the Russian military's toll, while Russian news outlets have largely stopped reporting on the Russian death toll. The number of civilian and military deaths is
impossible to determine with precision. Political scientist
Neta Crawford estimated 323,000 dead in the war by July 2025, with an average rate of 7,690 killed per month—surpassing the average of 2,826 killed per month in the
Gaza war and 772 killed in the
War in Afghanistan (2001–2021). According to Crawford, while civilians accounted for 80 percent of the fatalities in the Gaza war and 26 percent in the War in Afghanistan, only four percent of those killed in Ukraine were civilians.
Russian losses In September 2022, Russia's
Ministry of Defence confirmed that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in combat. In addition, the DPR confirmed that by 22 December 2022, 4,163 of their servicemen had been killed and 17,329 wounded. Subsequently,
leaked US intelligence documents cited the Russian
FSB that Russian forces suffered 110,000 casualties by 28 February 2023. He went on to claim that overall, the Russian military had lost 120,000 dead in Ukraine by late June 2023. He accused the Ministry of Defence of systematically downplaying Russian losses. According to
BBC News Russian and the
Mediazona news website, out of 216,205 Russian soldiers and contractors whose deaths they had documented by 1 May 2026, 3.3 percent (7,143) were officers, while 12.3 percent (26,350) were Motorized Rifle Troops and 2.4 percent (5,060) were members of the
Russian Airborne Forces (VDV). In addition, 8.7 percent (18,518) of Russian soldiers whose deaths had been confirmed were people who were
mobilized, while 11.3 percent (24,081) were
convicts. In February 2023,
Meduza published an article about the portion of Russian military casualties classified as missing, describing systemic problems with Russia's military record-keeping making it difficult for families to obtain their bodies or file for compensation by the government. Sergey Krivenko, head of the human-rights advocacy organization ″Citizen. Army. Law.″, estimated the amount of missing Russian soldiers at this time to be around 24,000, adding that most of the missing are soldiers who have been killed but have not had their body recovered.
Meduza, analyzing data on confirmed soldiers killed and data retrieved from the Russian
probate registry, estimated 75,000 Russian soldiers were killed since the start of the invasion and by the end of 2023, a statistical estimate within a wide range of between 66,000 and 88,000 killed. Subsequently, several months later,
Meduza gave a new estimate of 64,000 soldiers killed in 2022 and 2023, based on excess deaths reported by
Rosstat, including those in Crimea, but not other Ukrainian regions seized by Russia. Using a similar analysis, but in addition using a statistical model of the ratio of total deaths to deaths confirmed by name, stratified by age group, and the
Mediazona updated counts of named deaths,
Meduza gave an updated estimate of total Russian deaths of 120,000 killed through to 30 June 2024. Several days later,
The Economist made its own calculation using the severely-wounded-to-killed ratio from leaked documents by the
United States Department of Defense, giving an estimate of between 462,000 and 728,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded since the start of the conflict. According to their estimate, approximately 2% of all Russian men between the ages of 20 and 50 may have been killed or seriously wounded in Ukraine since February 2022. By the end of 2024,
Meduza estimated that over 165,000 Russian soldiers had died during the war. According to NATO and Western military officials, around 1,200 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in Ukraine every day on average in May and June 2024. In July 2024,
Chief of the General Staff of the British Army
Sir Roland Walker said that with the current way of fighting, it would take Russia five years to control the four regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia that
Russia claims as its own, and it would cost Russia from 1.5 to 1.8 million casualties. He said there are "no winners" in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, adding that "it is an utter devastation for both sides and lost generations." By August 2024, the daily average of Russian military casualties in the conflict was about 1,000 soldiers, according to a Western official. ,
Khakassia, Russia, August 2025 In late January 2025,
The New York Times reported that analysts concluded that Russia's losses, including killed and severely injured, were slightly fewer than two soldiers for every Ukrainian soldier killed or severely wounded, after they combined multiple different estimates of Ukrainian losses. Concurrently, a report by the US-based
Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) put Russian military casualties at over 950,000, including up to 250,000 killed. In October 2025,
Institute for the Study of War (ISW) cited alleged leaked Russian data published by the
I Want to Live hotline operated by the
Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, according to which Russia suffered 281,550 total losses between January and August 2025, including: 86,744 killed, 33,996 missing and 158,529 wounded. The
Mediazona's data department's analysis of the published list concluded that "significant anomalies" were revealed, stating the figures in the leak appeared "questionable", but also that it "appears plausible, to put it cautiously, albeit at the very highest end of the probable range" and questioned certain figures like losses reported for the "Dnepr" group or abnormally high killed-to-wounded ratio, though acknowledging that the "grey zone" between front lines means the wounded are often left with very little chance of survival. According to a
UK Defence Intelligence report on 14 October 2025, Russia suffered approximately 1.118 million total casualties since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, including 332,000 casualties since 1 January. According to the report, Russia's casualty rate reached its high in December 2024 with 1,570 losses per day on average. Afterwards it was gradually decreasing and dropped to 930 daily casualties in August. It has been steadily increasing again since then, surpassing 1,000 daily casualties between 5–12 October. In February 2026,
The Telegraph reported that for the first time since the invasion, Russia was losing more soldiers than it was able to recruit, with Western officials saying that Russia was losing 40,000 per month since November while recruiting up to 35,000 as total casualties surpassed 1.25 million, more than the total number of American casualties sustained by the US in World War II. The Telegraph reported that Russia had suffered over 1,700 casualties on 17 March, with the Ukrainian
unmanned systems force being responsible for 900 of them. On 3 April 2026, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy said that Russia had suffered its highest losses in a single month since the start of the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, with over 35,000 killed or wounded Russian soldiers in March.
Ukrainian losses Ukraine confirmed it had 10,000 killed and 30,000 wounded by the start of June 2022, while 7,200 troops were missing, including 5,600 captured. while presidential adviser
Oleksiy Arestovych said 150 soldiers were being killed and 800 wounded daily. Mid-June,
Davyd Arakhamia, Ukraine's chief negotiator with Russia, told
Axios that between 200 and 500 Ukrainian soldiers were killed every day. By late July, Ukrainian daily losses fell to around 30 killed and about 250 wounded. However, a new estimate by a U.S. official in October 2024, put the number of Ukrainian casualties at more than 57,500 killed and 250,000 wounded. As of 25 February 2024, Ukraine confirmed 31,000 of its soldiers had been killed in the conflict. In late November 2024, based on all previous estimates of Ukrainian military casualties,
The Economist estimated Ukrainian losses at between 60,000 and 100,000 killed and 400,000 wounded. On 8 December 2024,
US president-elect Donald Trump claimed 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and seriously wounded so far during the war. Subsequently, President Zelenskyy announced 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 370,000 were wounded, but that "approximately 50%" of these soldiers recovered and had returned to active duty. He updated the Ukrainian military's casualty toll in mid-February 2025, to over 46,000 killed and 380,000 wounded. Russia's Ministry of Defence claimed 61,207 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 49,368 wounded by September 2022, and in mid-December 2024, updated its claim of Ukrainian military casualties to almost 1,000,000 killed and wounded. A new update was given in late February 2026, putting Ukraine's overall military casualties at more than 1,500,000. in
Lviv, Ukraine, December 2023 According to the UALosses project started at the end of 2023, found to be reliable by Mediazona, Meduza, the Book of Memory group, BBC News Russian and The Economist, themselves also running projects tracking military fatalities in the conflict, it had documented by name the deaths of 91,559 Ukrainian fighters as of 8 April 2026, as well as 95,165 missing in action, for a total of 186,724 dead or missing since the start of the invasion, As of mid-April 2023, around 7,000 Ukrainian soldiers remained missing, of whom some 60-65 per cent were believed to be prisoners.
Regions and officers Men from the poverty-stricken regions of Russia's
Far North,
Far East and
Siberia were overrepresented among Russian war casualties.
Buryats,
Kalmyks,
Tuvans,
Chukchi, and
Nenets were reported as Russia's
ethnic minority groups suffering disproportionately high casualty rates among Russian forces. On the Ukrainian side, per UALosses, as of 8 April 2026, the
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast has the highest number of confirmed Ukrainian soldiers dead or missing at 18,255, while the
Kirovohrad Oblast has the highest confirmed death and missing count per capita at 8.086 per 1,000. In terms of confirmed deaths of officers of both belligerents, according to groups collecting that information, 7,143 Russian officers had been killed as of 1 May 2026, On 10 March 2026, president Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian head of military intelligence Lieutenant General
Oleh Ivashchenko said that according to Russian documents obtained by Ukrainian intelligence networks, some 1,315,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded in action since the start of the full scale invasion of Ukraine. President Zelenskyy said that these figures were "understated".
Civilian casualties on 10 October 2022 By 31 January 2026,
OHCHR had recorded 56,550 civilian casualties in Ukraine since 24 February 2022: 15,172 killed and 41,378 injured, but said they believe the real number is higher. This included 49,186 (12,392 killed and 36,794 injured) occurred on territory covered by the government of Ukraine and 7,364 (2,780 killed and 4,584 injured) on territory controlled by Russian armed forces or their affiliates. As of 30 June 2023, OHCHR said it had received information on 287 civilian casualties in
Western Russia, with 58 killed and 229 injured, while six more were killed and 16 injured in the
Republic of Crimea. Another two civilians were killed and one injured in
a Ukrainian drone attack on the Crimean bridge on 17 July 2023, The
7x7 Russian opposition media outlet confirmed the deaths of 394 civilians in Russia by 25 December 2024, not including those in Crimea. Elsewhere,
Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was mistakenly shot down and crashed at
Aktau,
Kazakhstan, on 25 December 2024, killing 38 people, including 25 Azerbaijanis, seven Russians and six Kazakhs. In April 2022, the civilian death toll included more than 200 children. A Project on Defense Alternatives study calculated a "modest" figure of 40,000 Ukrainian civilian dead by April 2023. In May 2023, US officials claimed Ukrainian civilian deaths were at 42,000, twice the then-estimated figure for Ukrainian military losses. According to the
Kyiv Independent, Russia does not allow monitoring in territories it controls, where civilian deaths are thought to be highest. Ukrainian humanitarian NGOs estimate that 7,000–30,000 Ukrainian civilians have been abducted by Russian forces from territories under their control. One group estimated 70,000 civilians were abducted. Many of them are reported to be held in Russian prisons and penal colonies, and some reportedly died (e.g.
Victoria Roshchyna).
Foreign civilians At least 218 foreign civilians from 27 countries are confirmed to have been killed during the war within Ukraine and outside it. Over 70 missing from Azerbaijan were also reported. Paul Urey and Dylan Healy, two British aid workers, were captured by Russian forces. Healy was charged with 'forcible seizure of power' and undergoing 'terrorist' training, but later released on 21 September 2022, while Urey died in captivity. He was released on 28 October 2022, and reached Ukrainian-controlled territory by 14 December.
Foreign fighters Excluding the Russian, North Korean, and Ukrainian military casualties, at least 2,411–3,082 combatants, foreign citizens or foreign-born, were killed during the war. By January 2023, another 1,000 had been wounded while fighting on the Ukrainian side. Below is a list of the nationalities of foreign combatant casualties. Two Peruvians, an Azerbaijani, a Colombian, a Czech, and an Estonian foreign fighter were also reported missing while fighting alongside the Ukrainian military, and 50 Nepalese, seven Indians and three Belarusians went missing while fighting for Russia.
Identification, repatriation and exchanges Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations, announced on 27 February 2022, that the country had reached out to the
International Committee of the Red Cross for help in the repatriation effort of the bodies of killed Russian soldiers. Due to concerns that Russia was not reporting the number or any casualties of soldiers in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry began issuing appeals that same day for relatives of Russian soldiers to help identify wounded, captured, or killed soldiers. The initiative, called
Ishchi Svoikh (), appeared aimed in part at undermining morale and support for the war in Russia and was quickly blocked by the Russian government's media regulator the day the initiative began at the request of Russia's Prosecutor-General's Office. Kyiv authorities have also reached out to the
International Commission on Missing Persons, which was formed to help after the
1990s Balkan conflicts and the
1995 Srebrenica massacre, and identifies individuals by collecting
DNA samples from the deceased and families to
cross match. The organization will also document the location of the body and how the individual died. As Russian soldiers began to retreat the identification of the dead civilians who had been unreported due to communication issues and constant fighting began to be reported. Documentation and identification of the bodies began with many hastily dug graves and rubble being cleared away to photograph and identify the bodies as well as count the number involved. Handwritten tags and passports have been attached to the bodies after identification before they are taken by coroners and officials. In some locations villagers kept track of the deceased, such as in
Yahidne, a village north of Kyiv, where they used a school basement wall to write the names of the deceased while under Russian control. As of late May 2022, Ukrainian authorities had stored at least 137 bodies of Russian soldiers that were collected near Kyiv, as well as 62 in the Kharkiv region. In December 2024, Russia's Deputy Minister of Defence
Anna Tsivilyova mentioned 48,000 soldiers
missing in action for whom relatives have contributed DNA samples as part of search applications. In March 2026,
TVP World reported on intercepted Russian messages which according to the HUR depicted a repeated practice in some Russian units where Russian soldiers are instructed by officers to behead killed Russian soldiers and bring the head along with documents for identification. According to the HUR, this is done so that the heads can be used to identify the bodies without the need to evacuate corpses out of combat zones.
Amputations in Kharkiv region On 2 August 2023, an investigation by
The Wall Street Journal found that Ukrainian medical amputations in the war came to between 20,000 and 50,000 including both military and civilians. In August 2025, the reported that officially, the
National Health Service of Ukraine recorded 95,000 amputations carried out in Ukraine on military personnel and civilians. Including amputations carried outside Ukraine the number was as high as 120,000. In comparison, during
World War One 41,000 British and 67,000 Germans needed amputations. while Ukraine stated 562 Russian soldiers were being held as prisoners as of 19 March, with 10 previously reported released in prisoner exchanges for five Ukrainian soldiers and the mayor of
Melitopol,
Ivan Fedorov. Subsequently, the first large prisoner exchange took place on 24 March, when 10 Russian and 10 Ukrainian soldiers, as well as 11 Russian and 19 Ukrainian civilian sailors, were exchanged. Among the released Ukrainian soldiers was one of 13 Ukrainian border-guard members captured during the Russian
attack on Snake Island. Later, on 1 April 86 Ukrainian servicemen were exchanged for an unknown number of Russian troops. Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S.,
Oksana Markarova, reported that a platoon of the
74th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade from
Kemerovo Oblast surrendered to Ukraine, saying they "didn't know that they were brought to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians". Ukraine held a series of press conferences with about a dozen POWs, where the POWs made comments against the invasion, how they had been manipulated and for the conflict to end. According to
The Guardian, while it was likely that Ukraine was using the discomfort of captured soldiers for propaganda purposes, the videos ultimately succeeded in showing the Russian servicemen's "authentic sense" of regret for having come to Ukraine.
Amnesty International said that Article 13 of the
Third Geneva Convention prohibits videos of captured soldiers. Captured Ukrainian soldiers with British citizenship were recorded calling for
Boris Johnson to arrange for them to be freed in exchange for pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician
Viktor Medvedchuk.
MP Robert Jenrick called the videos, broadcast separately on
Russia-24, a "flagrant breach" of the Geneva Convention. A Russian spokeswoman claimed that she told Johnson in a phone call about the men's treatment that the UK should "show mercy" to Ukrainian citizens by stopping military aid to the Ukrainian government when asked to show the men mercy. The head of the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for POW Treatment,
Iryna Vereshchuk, raised concerns that Russia had not released information to Ukrainian authorities on the location of any Ukrainian POW's and the International Red Cross had not been allowed to see them, as of 16 March. By 21 April, Russia claimed that 1,478 Ukrainian troops had been captured during the course of the
siege of Mariupol. On 22 April, Yuri Sirovatko, Minister of Justice of the Donetsk People's Republic, claimed that some 3,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war were held in the territory of the DPR. On 20 May, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that 2,439 Ukrainian soldiers had been taken prisoner over the previous five days as a result of the surrender of the last defenders of Mariupol, entrenched inside the
Azovstal Iron and Steel Works. On 26 May, Rodion Miroshnik, ambassador of the
Luhansk People's Republic to Russia, claimed that around 8,000 Ukrainian POWs were held within the territory of the DPR and LPR. According to a statement by
Sergei Shoigu,
Russia's Minister of Defence, in early June 2022, 6,489 Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a report by
The Independent on 9 June, it cited an intelligence report that more than 5,600 Ukrainian soldiers had been captured, while the number of Russian servicemen being held as prisoners had fallen to 550, from 900 in April, following several prisoner exchanges. In contrast, the
Ukrainska Pravda newspaper claimed 1,000 Russian soldiers were being held as prisoners as of 20 June. According to Ukraine, as of mid-November 2023, 4,337 Ukrainians were being held by Russia as prisoners of war, including 3,574 soldiers and 763 civilians, while by this point 2,598 Ukrainians had been released, including 133 civilians. As of early June 2024, according to Russia, 6,465 Ukrainian soldiers were still being held prisoner in Russia and 1,348 Russian soldiers were prisoners in Ukraine, while by this point 3,210 Ukrainians had been confirmed released, including 143 civilians. Between August 2024 and March 2025, 971 Russian soldiers had been captured during
fighting in Kursk Oblast, according to Ukraine. As of the beginning of February 2025, 1,382 Russian servicemen that were previously thought missing were confirmed to be in Ukrainian captivity, while the overall number of Russian prisoners of war was thought to be much higher. According to the UALosses project, 6,404 Ukrainian soldiers were being held as prisoners as of 23 April 2025. By 8 April 2026, the number had fallen to 4,454. ==See also==