How do Ukrainian soldier fatalities compare with Russia’s?
Summary
- Data from UAlosses, a website, show that at least 65,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Donald Trump appears determined to end the war in Ukraine—and on terms that are strongly in Russia’s favour. He and his vice-president have harangued Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office, warning him that he has no leverage and that he needs a ceasefire or he will have no country left. However, the latest casualty figures tell a different story. This is a bloody war, but Russia is bleeding more than Ukraine. And it is taking almost no territory.
The invasion has come at enormous cost to human life. New death-toll estimates show that the fighting has become more deadly with each passing year. Our charts below show the latest figures, which are drawn from intelligence agencies, defence officials, independent researchers and open-source intelligence.
Start with Ukraine. Data from UAlosses, a website, show that at least 65,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. To get their numbers, researchers combed through news articles and social-media posts to compile a list of soldiers who are known to have been killed. They found another 55,000 who are missing in action, which could put the death toll at 120,000.
In September 2024 a leaked report from a Ukrainian intelligence agency suggested that at least 70,000-80,000 soldiers had died. These numbers do not include civilian deaths, on which there is strikingly little data. Many tens of thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed.
Russian deaths, however, are even higher. BBC Russia estimates that between 150,000 and 210,000 soldiers had been killed as of February. Other places have produced similar estimates. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank based in London, reckons that as of early January, at least 172,000 soldiers had died.
Mediazona and Meduza, two independent Russian media outlets, put the number between 160,000 and 165,000 by the end of 2024. They use inheritance and other records to arrive at these estimates, which are also available by week (see chart 3).
These data suggest that Russian deaths have increased exponentially, from about 20,000 in 2022, to about 50,000 in 2023 and nearly 100,000 in 2024.
Monthly casualty estimates from Britain’s ministry of defence and war activity detected by The Economist’s tracker also suggest that the fighting has become more intense. In December a British official said that Russian casualties (including dead and wounded) were on track to reach 1m within six months.
Despite Russia’s size advantage, these numbers suggest that roughly one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 49 has been killed or injured in the past three years.
Mr Trump has cited very different numbers for those killed in the conflict so far: “We have numbers that almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed, about 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed. Russia is bigger, they have more soldiers to lose. But that’s no way to run a country," he said on January 20th. A former NATO official told The Economist that these figures, “like much else he says", were not credible.
This higher death toll in 2024 comes with strikingly little change in territory (see chart 4). By our calculations Russia captured only 0.57% of Ukrainian territory in 2024. At that rate it would take another 141 years for its soldiers to conquer the whole country.
Ukraine is not obviously losing this war. No matter how much pressure Mr Trump puts on Mr Zelensky, he will not be inclined to accept a Carthaginian peace that dooms his country to a chaotic and miserable future—or which leaves the door open to another invasion.
