Study: Nearly 2 million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, wounded or missing since the start of the war

2026-01-28 18:25:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Study: Nearly 2 million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, wounded

The number of Russian and Ukrainian troops killed, wounded or missing in nearly four years of war could reach 2 million by this spring, according to a report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The report estimates that Russia has suffered about 1.2 million casualties, while nearly 600,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed, wounded or missing.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, neither side has publicly revealed comprehensive casualty figures, treating the scale of losses as a carefully guarded state secret.

The Kremlin dismissed the CSIS report as unreliable, insisting that only the Russian Defense Ministry had the authority to publish Russian casualty figures. The CSIS estimates were based on interviews with Western and Ukrainian officials and data collected by the independent Russian media outlet Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service.

By any historical comparison, the losses are staggering. The expert group noted that Russian battlefield casualties in Ukraine were 17 times greater than Soviet losses in Afghanistan during the 1980s, 11 times higher than during Russia's first and second Chechen wars, and more than five times greater than all Russian and Soviet wars combined since World War II.

According to the report, Russian casualties are estimated to outnumber Ukrainian losses by roughly 2.5:1 or 2:1. But the figures also paint a grim picture for Ukraine, whose population is much smaller and whose ability to withstand prolonged losses and mobilize troops is much more limited.

While Moscow made some advances late last year in eastern Ukraine and near the Dnipropetrovsk region, progress has since slowed uncontrollably due to winter conditions and strong Ukrainian resistance.

According to data from Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, Russian forces captured 152 square kilometers (58 square miles) of Ukrainian territory between January 1 and 25, the slowest pace of advance since March of last year. Russia, Ukraine and the United States met in Abu Dhabi last weekend for their first peace talks since Russia's full-scale invasion, but there were no signs of any progress, with the Kremlin continuing to press ahead with its maximalist demands over Ukrainian territory. /CNA