Russia Smashes Past Grim War Milestone: Ukraine

Russian casualties in Ukraine have surpassed 450,000 since February 2022, according to figures published by Ukraine’s military on Wednesday.

Moscow’s forces lost 830 troops in the past day, by Kyiv’s count, bringing the total number of reported casualties in the more than two years of full-scale war to 450,080. This tally of reported Russian casualties is roughly the same as how many soldiers Ukraine has said are deployed in total in Russian-controlled Ukraine.

Casualty counts are murky in war, and neither Moscow nor Kyiv is keen to offer up estimates on its own losses. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Western estimates of Russian losses come in lower than Ukraine’s count. The U.K. government said on March 3 that from February 2022 to early March 2024, total Russian casualties—killed and wounded—stood at 355,000.

Nonetheless, the figures from the Ukrainian military give some indication of the toll the many grinding months of war is having on Russia’s armed forces ahead of an anticipated fresh Russian offensive in the coming weeks.

Spikes in Casualties

Casualty counts typically skyrocket during drawn-out battles, like during the Russian attacks on the Donetsk city of Bakhmut in early 2023 and when Russia launched its assault on the strategic eastern city of Avdiivka in October 2023.

Moscow has controlled Avdiivka, once a Ukrainian stronghold, since mid-February 2024. A significant victory for the Kremlin, it took its toll—the U.K. government has assessed that February 2024 saw the highest Russian casualty rate of the war. Throughout the month, the average daily number of killed and wounded was just shy of 1,000, the British Defense Ministry said.

Avdiivka highlights how “challenging and costly” offensives can be for Russia, Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow with the National Institute of Strategic Studies, a Ukrainian research foundation, told Newsweek.

Ukrainian officials around Avdiivka estimated that Russia sustained 47,000 casualties in its push on the city. Of these, around 17,000 Russian personnel were killed, with approximately 30,000 injured.

Looking toward the rest of the year, “casualties will spike if there is another pitched battle as with Avdiivka or Bakhmut where both sides decide to hold their ground over a town or city, or a defended area,” said land warfare analyst Samuel Cranny-Evans, an associate fellow with the U.K. think tank, the Royal United Services Institute.

“A well defended Ukrainian area may increase Russian casualties if it becomes the focus of an advance,” he told Newsweek.

Russian casualties will also depend on how well Ukraine is resourced, said Bielieskov.

Ukrainian officials have said Russia may start up a new offensive as early as the end of May, but there are deep anxieties in Kyiv over military supplies, not least ammunition, from its Western backers.

Tens of billions of dollars in security aid for Ukraine has been caught in Congress for months. The uncertainty from Ukraine’s single-largest donator jeopardizes Ukrainian operations, analysts have said. European countries, led by the Czech Republic, are in the process of drumming up funding for new ammunition batches earmarked for Ukraine.

Since the capture of Avdiivka, though, Russia’s reported casualties have dropped. Moscow likely reduced attacks to recover from the onslaught on Avdiivka, and to pull down casualties ahead of March’s presidential election, the U.K. government said on Sunday.

Yet each year brings higher average daily casualties for Russia, the British Defense Ministry assessed at the weekend. On average, Moscow sustained 913 casualties each day in 2024 so far, the U.K. said. For 2022, this figure stood at 400, and hovered just under 700 for 2023, London added.

Is It Sustainable?

For Russia’s large pool of recruits, keeping the war effort going with a similar casualty rate will be possible for a few years, experts suggest.

Unless there is a “sudden collapse in morale,” Cranny-Evans said, Russia can keep on going despite the casualty rate for some time. “Currently such casualty rate is quite sustainable to Russia,” agreed Bielieskov.

Russian authorities said in March they were expanding their armed forces, including creating two new armies by the time the year is out. Western intelligence has assessed however that so far, newly created forces have been “immediately committed to Ukraine,” thus hindering expansion efforts.

Moscow is likely recruiting around 30,000 extra personnel each month, the U.K. has said, fueling its mass attacks on Ukrainian positions. Ukraine’s military intelligence has given a similar figure.

Ukraine’s Losses

Ukrainian casualties, too, are influenced by offensives, tactics and weapons supplies. Just as Russian casualties rose during urban battles in Donetsk, Ukraine’s losses climbed during their counteroffensive in summer 2023, Cranny-Evans said.

Like Russia, Ukraine is tight-lipped on its losses. In late February 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed since early 2022.

In mid-March, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, said Ukraine had sustained approximately 71,000 casualties since the start of the year. This was very similar to the Russian casualty figures put forward by Ukraine’s military—Kyiv’s tally at the time put the Kremlin’s casualties at approximately 72,000 since the start of 2024.

At the end of 2023, Shoigu had said Ukraine sustained 383,000 casualties since February 2022 and December 2023, according to Russian state media reporting. This figure is inflated, but the conflict has nonetheless been a “very, very painful war for the Ukrainian people,” Nick Reynolds, a land warfare specialist with the RUSI think tank, previously told Newsweek.

Ukraine has a far more limited pool of potential personnel to draw from, and has been wrestling with dilemmas on how to replenish its ranks for months. Earlier this month, Zelensky signed off on a law lowering the minimum age for being drafted into the military from 27 to 25.