Three years of death A new estimate from Meduza and Mediazona shows Russia is paying for its war against Ukraine with hundreds of lives each day
The brutal full-scale war the Kremlin unleashed against Ukraine three years ago today has come at an enormous cost to Russian society. Meduza and Mediazona can now reveal that an estimated 160,000–165,000 Russian soldiers, officers, contract troops, mobilized personnel, and other fighters have been killed since February 2022. This statistical estimate of excess male mortality over the course of the full-scale war is based on comparing and analyzing various records. Namely, confirmed casualty lists compiled by volunteers and inheritance case data from Russia’s National Probate Registry. However, this estimate does not include foreign nationals who fought for Russia, such as residents of Luhansk, Donetsk, and other occupied Ukrainian regions. It also accounts only for fatalities, excluding wounded soldiers — even those severely injured. Despite these limitations, this remains the most reliable available assessment of Russia’s total military losses. Here’s what the data reveals about the war’s trajectory thus far.
Over the past three years, the nature of Russia’s war against Ukraine has shifted multiple times. This is reflected in both battlefield dynamics and the scale of losses on each side.
The clearest takeaway from the last three years of fighting is that Russia’s losses have steadily increased each year. In the first three months of the full-scale war, Russian forces were losing an estimated 40 to 60 soldiers per day. By the same period last year, daily losses had risen to 250. However, these mounting casualties had little visible impact on the battlefield map. In total, Russia has lost nearly twice as many soldiers each year as the year before:
- 2022: Approximately 20,000 Russian soldiers were killed
- 2023: Another 47,000 to 53,000 Russian soldiers died
- 2024: The estimated death toll was nearly an additional 100,000
The 2024 estimate is the least precise and may be revised as more data becomes available. The longer the period since active fighting, the more accurate the assessment of excess male mortality. The least precise estimates are for the six months closest to the date of analysis, when the lists of the deceased in the National Probate Registry remain incomplete. Even so, casualty trends can still be estimated with reasonable accuracy.
The above graph shows several waves of rising losses, followed by brief declines — though each drop-off occurs at a higher baseline than before.
The first major surge coincided with the initial full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russian forces, unprepared for Ukraine’s strong resistance and struggling with logistical and command failures, suffered heavy losses. These were particularly high among career soldiers and young contract troops. During this period, Russia lost approximately 500 troops per week, with officers making up nearly a quarter of those killed — a figure that has since dropped to 3–5 percent.
After Russia’s retreat from Kyiv in April 2022, its casualty rate halved, only to rise again in the fall. At that time, Ukrainian counteroffensives caught underprepared Russian units off guard, forcing them to retreat from Izyum, Balakliya, and the western bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region. Russia’s large-scale offensive near Bakhmut began soon after. The battle for Bakhmut saw its highest casualties between January and February 2023, when Russian forces were losing up to 1,500 troops per week — about 150 per day on average. A substantial number of those killed were recruits from Russian prisons, who were first deployed to the front in early 2023.
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Following the fall of Bakhmut, daily Russian losses declined slightly to 100–125 per day in the summer of 2023, when Ukraine attempted a counteroffensive in the Zaporizhzhia region. However, this decline was only relative to the staggering losses sustained in Bakhmut — Russian casualty rates remained comparable to those in the full-scale war’s opening phase.
In October 2023, a new Russian offensive began, ushering in a phase of losses on an unprecedented scale. Even the deadliest weeks of the battle for Bakhmut paled in comparison. During this period, Russia’s daily death toll rarely fell below 200 and often exceeded that figure by 1.5- or two-fold. The deadliest month for Russian troops, based on the most reliable data available (that is, excluding the last six months), was May 2024, when Russian forces launched offensives in the Kharkiv region, as well as northwest of Avdiivka toward Ocheretyne, and further toward Pokrovsk.
The high rate of Russian casualties continued through fall 2024, but a sharp decline appeared in the final months of the year. This drop is almost certainly not reflective of real battlefield conditions but rather a result of incomplete data. Our casualty estimation method naturally yields artificially lower figures for the most recent months. A clearer picture of this period will emerge in about six months’ time.
