Ukraine War Military Losses Top Two Million, CSIS Estimates
WASHINGTON-More than two million Russian and Ukrainian military personnel have been killed, wounded or gone missing since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to a study released on Wednesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), highlighting the scale of attrition in Europe’s largest conflict since World War II.
The Washington-based think tank estimated that combined military casualties have exceeded two million, with Russian forces accounting for the majority of the losses. The assessment said Russia has suffered about 1.4 million casualties, including an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 troops killed during the conflict.
According to the report, Ukrainian forces have sustained between 525,000 and 625,000 military casualties since the war began. The study estimated Ukrainian fatalities at between 125,000 and 150,000 personnel over the same period.
CSIS said Russian military deaths in Ukraine now exceed four times the total number of U.S. military fatalities across all conflicts fought since the end of World War II, underscoring the unprecedented human cost of Moscow’s campaign.
The report also suggested that the imbalance in battlefield losses has widened in recent months. It estimated that the ratio of Russian to Ukrainian casualties likely reached approximately eight to one during the first half of 2026, indicating significantly higher Russian losses as fighting continued across multiple fronts.
The study provides one of the latest independent assessments of military casualties in the war, as both Moscow and Kyiv disclose limited official figures and wartime casualty estimates remain difficult to verify independently.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, triggering the largest land conflict in Europe in decades. Since then, intense fighting has continued across eastern and southern Ukraine, with both sides relying on drones, artillery, missiles and entrenched defensive positions as the conflict has evolved into a prolonged war of attrition.
Independent casualty estimates vary because of restricted access to frontline areas, differing methodologies and the limited release of official military data by the parties involved. Neither Russia nor Ukraine regularly publishes comprehensive figures for battlefield losses, making external assessments by research institutions and intelligence agencies an important reference for measuring the war’s human toll.
The CSIS report focused exclusively on military casualties and did not include civilian losses or broader humanitarian consequences resulting from the conflict.
