How many soldiers have Russia and Ukraine lost? And how do their armies compare? Meduza’s military analysts answer readers’ biggest questions about the war (part 3)
In October, we asked our Russian-language readers to send in their most pressing questions about the Russia–Ukraine war. We received hundreds of messages in response, and our Explainers team reviewed each one, grouped similar questions by topic, and then selected the most representative ones to answer directly. In part three of this series, our military analysts examine casualties and the current size of the armies fighting on both sides.
Read part one of this series here and part two here.
Casualties in both armies
Is there any level of losses that would become unacceptable for the Russian army, one that would force Moscow to end the fighting? — Alexey
Roughly how many people are killed or wounded each day on both sides of the front line? — Viktor
I’d like to understand the dynamics of casualties — both deaths and injuries, and the severity of those injuries — on the Ukrainian and Russian sides over the past year or two, including among Russia’s mobilized troops. How have these numbers changed, what drives the shifts, what might come next? And what happens to the wounded; how often are they sent back to the front? — Yegor
How bad are the losses on the Russian side? I know they’re clearly horrific, but could they lead to new waves of mobilization, or even a full-scale one? — Kr
There’s only relatively complete data for Russian military deaths. After Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), stopped publishing overall mortality figures (along with much other public data), the country’s National Inheritance Registry became the only reliable and sufficiently comprehensive source for assessing Russian combat losses. Meduza and Mediazona have been jointly analyzing it since 2023, and our calculations for 2022 and 2023 closely matched demographic estimates based on Rosstat’s own mortality data.
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By mid-2025, between 200,000 and 220,000 Russians had been killed in the war. This figure excludes foreign nationals — including Ukrainian citizens who fought for Russia — and those without an official death certificate (for example, missing persons). However, Russian law allows courts to declare a person dead even if no body has been recovered. Around the turn of 2024–2025, there was a sharp increase in such court rulings, most initiated by military authorities. The Russian Defense Ministry appears to have decided to reduce the number of missing soldiers by officially reclassifying them as dead. In total, between 30,000 and 40,000 court cases to declare missing soldiers dead had been opened by mid-2025.
Russian military losses rose in 2025, according to the inheritance registry data. This can be explained only partly by the fact that, in 2025, courts recorded the date of death for some of those previously declared missing (and later legally pronounced dead) as the date when the court ruling took effect. (For others, they used the date of disappearance listed in the commander’s report.) It’s likely that the increase in losses is real. If an average of 200–250 soldiers were killed each day in 2024, the number climbed to about 300 during the peak of Russia’s 2025 offensive.
The number of wounded remains unknown. In theory, these figures could be estimated from federal and regional budget reports, which include compensation payments to the injured. But these payments are scattered across multiple budget categories. Data from regional budgets in early 2022 (which at that time was still published) suggested a ratio of 1 killed to 1.7–1.8 severely wounded — those discharged from service for medical reasons. However, the nature of combat has since changed, and that ratio likely has too.
For reference, U.S. and allied forces fighting in Afghanistan had a roughly 1:1 ratio of killed to seriously wounded — but the nature of that war was different. Still, for a rough estimate of Russia’s irrecoverable losses, the number of deaths can reasonably be multiplied by a factor of two to three.
Only data on the severely wounded is useful for estimating such irrecoverable losses: soldiers with light injuries are, by law, required to return to duty after recovery, and many have done so multiple times. For this reason, U.S. estimates of “one million killed or wounded,” which clearly include lightly injured soldiers, are not especially meaningful.
Estimating Ukrainian losses is even more difficult. Since the start of the war, Ukraine’s statistical agencies haven’t released mortality data by age or gender, nor is there a public registry comparable to Russia’s inheritance database. The only option is to compare name-based lists of the dead compiled from obituaries and other open sources. The Russian database maintained by Mediazona, BBC News Russian, and volunteers contains over 140,000 names, while the Ukrainian list is nearly half that size. However, Ukraine also has a separate list of more than 80,000 missing soldiers.
Russia has no such comprehensive list of the missing, but we know that soldiers listed as missing in action are now being reclassified as dead at an accelerated pace. It’s also likely that the number of missing in the Russian Armed Forces is lower — in recent years, the battlefield has more often remained under Russian control.
Comparing name-based lists can’t provide a reliable picture of the true casualty ratio: neither list is complete, and the likelihood of inclusion differs between countries due to data collection methods and the availability of public obituaries. Still, the data suggests that the number of soldiers killed on each side is roughly comparable. In categories where record-keeping is more reliable — for example, lists of killed officers — the numbers are almost identical.
For Russia, it can be cautiously estimated that by mid-2025, irrecoverable losses — meaning all service members and volunteers who can no longer fight due to death or severe injury — totaled between 440,000 and 650,000 people.
Exchanging the dead
Why is there such a large discrepancy between Russia and Ukraine in the number of soldiers’ bodies exchanged? Russia returns them by the thousands, while Ukraine sends only a few dozen. Does that mean the losses are really that disproportionate? — Ivan
The explanation is simple: for the past two years, the battlefield has, with few exceptions, remained under Russian control. Weeks or months after fighting ends, when the front line moves a safe distance away, military burial teams collect the remains of the dead — both their own and those of the other side. The opposing sides then exchange the bodies: “theirs” for “ours.”
The last time Russia received more fallen soldiers than it returned to Ukraine was in August 2023, when Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the Zaporizhzhia region and near Bakhmut came to an end, and the Ukrainian army lost the initiative on the battlefield.
Numbers at the front
There’s constant talk about a “shortage of manpower” on the front lines. But in reality, it’s not at all clear how many troops each side actually has on the front line as of late 2025. — Anton Kh.
It’s difficult to make a precise estimate, though a few rough methods exist.
The first is to rely on field reports. Judging by statements from pro-military “war correspondents,” “volunteers,” and soldiers themselves, the Russian army doesn’t appear to be facing an acute shortage of personnel. However, some individual units are facing manpower shortage after suffering heavy losses. The situation in the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the opposite: complaints about a lack of infantry are frequent.
Another way is to compare the nominal strength of the two armies based on the number of combat units — measured in battalion equivalents (motorized rifle, mechanized, airborne, tank, and so on). By that measure, the difference isn’t large.
The exact ratio is hard to determine because both armies have a large number of temporary units and “paper” formations. The Russian Armed Forces, for example, list dozens of “territorial regiments” — formations where newly signed contract soldiers are first sent. The Ukrainian military, in turn, includes understrength brigades and independent battalions of unclear status. Brigades and regiments also vary widely in size — some giant brigades have nine battalions, while others have just three. Still, rough estimates suggest that the authorized strength of Russia’s combat units is about 10–15 percent higher than Ukraine’s.
The Russian army also has a far larger number of supporting formations — artillery, engineering, and other non-drone units — attached to its divisions, corps, armies, and military districts.
In terms of total authorized strength, rough estimates suggest that the Russian forces operating in Ukraine outnumber the Ukrainian troops near the front by at least one-third. But it’s important to remember that authorized strength is not the same as actual strength.
There’s also a third method, but it’s only of limited use. In theory, one could try to calculate the balance between “inflow” (new recruits) and “outflow” (irrecoverable losses). Applied to Russia, it yields inflated estimates of 800,000 to one million troops at the front. But it doesn’t account for other forms of attrition, such as desertion or soldiers leaving their units. Russian authorities themselves claim there are about 700,000 troops currently on the front lines.
For Ukraine, the balance is even harder to gauge. Neither its total losses nor the number of mobilized soldiers are known. Officials say they are drafting “up to 30,000 people” each month — though they don’t specify exactly how many, and some recruits are assigned to rear support units rather than combat roles.
In short, the only thing that can be said with confidence is that Ukraine’s fighting force is smaller than Russia’s — but not dramatically so. This is also clear based on what’s happening at the front.
Morale
How can we assess the morale of soldiers in both armies, and how much does it affect the fighting? — Ivan
Both armies are showing signs of war fatigue. What weighs especially heavily on soldiers is the awareness that their time at the front has no clear end — it could last as long as the war itself, or as long as they manage to survive. This is reflected in the growing number of deserters: according to official data, more than 50,000 Ukrainian deserters have been prosecuted, along with another 235,000 who’ve left their units without authorization. In Russia, the total number of people prosecuted for desertion or going AWOL is around 20,000.
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