A ‘very bloody war:' What is the death toll of Russia's war in Ukraine?

Yahoo

13-02-2025

After holding a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 12, U.S. President Donald Trump once again claimed the "horrible, very bloody war" in Ukraine had cost "millions" of lives.
It's not the first time Trump has claimed that such numbers of people have been killed in the war.
"We have numbers that almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed," Trump said in January, adding that "about 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed."
But calculating the total number of deaths — both civilian and military — is complicated as Russia seldom comments on its battlefield losses, Ukraine has only recently begun releasing official information on its figures, and civilian deaths in occupied areas of Ukraine are largely unknown.
According to figures released by Kyiv, U.N. statistics, and open-source data published by BBC Russia, the total death toll of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, as well as Ukrainian civilians stands at 147,459.
The true number of Ukrainians and Russians who have been killed, however, is almost certainly far higher.
According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine has lost 45,100 soldiers on the battlefield since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Speaking in an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan published on Feb. 4, Zelensky said that there have also been a total of 390,000 cases of injuries on the battlefield.
The true number of wounded soldiers is less given that some soldiers sustained multiple wounds in separate cases.
Kyiv largely avoided commenting on its losses for the first two years of the full-scale war, until Zelensky announced in February 2024 that 31,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed.
At the time, he refrained from detailing how many soldiers had been wounded, "because Russia will then know how many people have left the battlefield."
The numbers provided by Zelensky do not include the Ukrainian soldiers killed between 2022 and 2014, when Russia began its war against Ukraine. According to an estimation by U.N., 4,400 Ukrainian soldiers were killed during this period.
Zelensky also told Morgan that it was not clear how many Ukrainians are currently held as prisoners of war compared to those missing in action.
"How many of those are missing (in action) and how many of those are prisoners (of war), I do not know the precise number but we are working on it," Zelensky added.
Though there are no official figures on how many Ukrainian soldiers are being held as POWs in Russia, to date over 4,000 Ukrainians have been returned home in prisoner swaps, according to the latest figures from Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. This number includes both military personnel and civilians.
Russia has lost over 850,000 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022, according to the latest figures by the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces.
While Ukraine's figures do not specify killed or wounded, the overall consensus is that it includes dead, wounded, missing, and captured. For comparison, the U.K. suffered 750,000 military casualties during the six years of World War II.
Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Dec. 30 that 427,000 casualties, or more than half of the total figure, occurred in 2024 alone, with troop losses reaching record levels in November and December as Russia stepped up its assaults in Donetsk Oblast.
The accelerated casualties suffered by Russia continued into 2025. According to Ukraine's Khortytsia group of forces, Russia lost more soldiers fighting in the direction of Pokrovsk, a small city in Donetsk Oblast, than its total losses in the Second Chechen War.
Syrskyi previously claimed that 7,000 Russian soldiers were killed near Pokrovsk in January alone.
The last time Russia publicly released figures on its military death toll was September 2022, when the Kremlin claimed just 5,937 men had been killed fighting in Ukraine.
More realistic estimates come from an ongoing research project by Mediazona, an independent Russian outlet, working with BBC Russia. The outlets have so far confirmed through open-source data the names of 90,019 Russian soldiers killed during the full-scale invasion.
Russia's real losses are likely higher, as the media analysis is estimated to cover 45% to 65% of the actual death toll. According to the journalists' estimates, the actual losses could range from 138,500 to 200,000 people killed.
Read also: As Russian losses in Ukraine mount, Putin faces 'devastating' demographic timebomb
The true military death toll is the subject of intense media debate. In December 2024, Zelensky disputed reports that as many as 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed during the full-scale war.
Zelensky's comments likely referred to the Wall Street Journal's claims published in September that 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, with a further 400,000 wounded. The outlet estimated Russia's losses at as many as to 200,000 killed and 400,000 injured.
The Economist published a similar estimation in November that between 60,000 to 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed. Another 400,000 were too injured to fight on, according to the Economist's estimates.
The figures suggest that almost one in 20 fighting-age men in Ukraine have been killed or injured because of Russia's war.
"I want to tell you that, no, (the number of those killed is) less, much less," Zelensky said in an interview with Kyodo News published on Dec. 1, while refusing to provide a detailed number of casualties.
"However, we have to be honest, we do not know how many Ukrainians have been killed in occupied territories of Ukraine," Zelensky added.
According to U.N. statistics from the end of 2024, over 12,340 civilian deaths have been recorded in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
More than 27,836 Ukrainians were also recorded as wounded during that period. According to the U.N., aerial bombs and long-range weapons caused a greater number of casualties in 2024 than in the previous year.
However, the U.N. figures consist mostly of Ukrainian civilians who have been killed in either areas of Ukraine under Kyiv's control — for example in Russian drone and missile attacks on cities like Kharkiv, Kyiv, or Zaporizhzhia — or in areas of Ukraine that were occupied, but have since been liberated, like Kherson.
Civilians killed in areas that have remained under Russian occupation are not part of the official figures, as the U.N. has not been able to access these areas to verify all deaths.
This includes cities like Mariupol, for example. The U.N. officials who compiled the figures told the Kyiv Independent that they had managed to verify around 2,100 civilian deaths in the city.
An estimate by Human Rights Watch based on satellite images of mass graves said at least 8,000 civilians had been killed in Mariupol, but noted that the true figure was likely significantly higher.
These figures also only include those who died in the first months of the full-scale invasion, during the intense siege and battle for the city.
The estimate does not include those who died later from the conditions imposed by Russian occupying forces, which left the city with little functioning infrastructure.
Ukraine considers 60,000 of its citizens have gone missing during the war. The missing person count does not include over 19,500 Ukrainian children forcibly deported to Russia, Belarus, or Russian-occupied territories.
Read also: 'Totally screwed' — How Trump, Hegseth are damaging Ukraine in talks with Russia
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