Key facts
- Ukraine's General Staff reported Russia has lost 1,474,030 troops since Feb. 24, 2022.
- The reported figure includes 1,390 Russian casualties from the past day.
- Ukraine has not disclosed its own losses, citing operational secrecy.
- Western think tanks estimate Ukraine's losses are significantly lower than Russia's.
Ukraine's General Staff announced on August 21 that Russia has sustained approximately 1,474,030 troops since the full-scale invasion commenced on February 24, 2022. This figure includes 1,390 casualties reported over the preceding day. The report also detailed substantial Russian losses in military hardware, including 12,286 tanks, 25,170 armored combat vehicles, 48,318 artillery systems, 439 aircraft, and 354 helicopters. Additionally, Ukraine claims Russia has lost 472,849 unmanned aerial vehicles and 35 ships and boats. Ukraine has maintained operational secrecy regarding its own military losses. Independent Western analyses, such as those from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), suggest that Russian casualties significantly outweigh Ukrainian losses, with estimated ratios ranging from 2.5:1 to 2:1. A CSIS report from January 2026 projected that Ukraine might have suffered between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties between February 2022 and December 2025, with 100,000 to 140,000 killed in action. Ukrainian officials rarely disclose their casualty figures, though President Volodymyr Zelensky stated in February that at least 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in action, with many more missing. The difficulty in retrieving bodies for DNA confirmation due to intense fighting and drone activity complicates the process of accounting for fallen soldiers.