Russian losses in the war with Ukraine.
Mediazona count, updated

In this report, we look at what’s known about losses suffered by the Ukrainian armed forces and how these compare with those of the Russian army.

As before, Mediazona does not track the number of Ukrainian military deaths—our resources simply don’t allow it. However, several projects do collect this data using methods similar to ours, including the analysis of obituaries and open-source material. One such project is UALosses.

We previously used UALosses’ data in a piece marking the anniversary of the war’s outbreak in 2024, comparing casualties on both sides. At that time, we also verified a sample from their database and confirmed its authenticity (though, as is inevitable with such efforts, it contained some errors).

Unlike Russia, Ukraine occasionally releases information about its own military losses. The country maintains a publicly accessible registry of those listed as missing “under special circumstances”, a term covering both military personnel and civilians who have lost contact while in combat zones. As of February 2025, nearly 63,000 people were listed in the registry.

In December 2024, Yurii Butusov, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian news site Censor.net, reported that roughly 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, with a further 35,000 missing in action.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has also commented on casualty figures on several occasions. Typically, he has pushed back against estimates from Western intelligence and media, insisting the real numbers are significantly lower.

According to UALosses’ current estimates, total Ukrainian losses (including the dead, the missing, and those taken prisoner) exceed 130,000. The breakdown includes 68,000 confirmed dead, 60,000 missing, and over 6,000 captured. It appears that in early 2025, UALosses uploaded the entire missing persons registry to their site and counted all entries as part of Ukraine’s total military losses.

When comparing Ukrainian and Russian losses, however, only confirmed deaths can meaningfully be considered. First, we have no reliable figures for how many Russian troops are listed as missing. Second, we believe the method used by UALosses has serious limitations: the Ukrainian registry may include civilians, and “missing in action” is not a final designation. Many people are later officially declared dead, which creates the risk of duplication—being counted both as missing and killed.

It would also be inaccurate to project Ukraine’s missing-to-killed ratio onto Russian figures. While Ukraine’s number of missing is close to the number of confirmed deaths, that doesn’t mean the same is true for Russia. Still, this ratio does suggest that Russia may also have a large number of unreported or “invisible” losses.

We’ve found signs of missing Russian personnel in court records, particularly in the thousands of lawsuits filed by unit commanders—often a clue that soldiers have disappeared without official recognition of death.

Here’s how UALosses’ figures compare with Mediazona’s in terms of the size and growth of casualty database. The chart shows the Russian database expanding more quickly, though this may reflect not only the scale of losses but also differences in how the two projects operate.

The chart tracking the dates of soldiers’ deaths offer a clearer picture of how each army’s losses have fluctuated over time. One important caveat: the date of death isn’t known for every person, though this information is slightly more complete for Ukrainian troops than for Russian ones.

Efforts to document Russian losses continue to face significant logistical hurdles. More than 10,000 obituaries remain unverified in Mediazona’s backlog, awaiting manual review by volunteers. These unprocessed records can’t simply be added to the total, as many likely include duplicate entries. The task is painstaking and slow: volunteers must cross-check each record individually, line by line. A recent audit revealed an error that had led to the double-counting of over 400 cases as both cross-checked and unprocessed.

Projects tracking Ukrainian losses face similar strains, being slow to update and falling short of the pace of the war. The scale of losses has outpaced the ability of civil society to track them in real time.

One notable contrast between the two sides is the accessibility of official information. In Ukraine, the names of fallen soldiers frequently appear in presidential decrees, public award notices, and local government posts—resources that are open to journalists and researchers. In Russia, similar decrees are classified, often marked “top secret”. 

What we know about losses

Here’s how the losses are distributed across Russian regions. These are absolute numbers, not adjusted for population or number of military units.

On the map, you can choose between total losses and losses by military branch, as well as see where the deceased mobilised soldiers were from.

In most cases, from death reports or indirect signs (uniform or sleeve patches in photos), it’s possible to determine which branch of the military the deceased served in, or how they joined the army (mobilised, volunteer, prisoner, etc.)

We compared these groups of servicemen on a separate graph.

From early summer and into the mid-fall season of 2022, volunteers bore the brunt of the losses, which is strikingly different from the situation in the initial stage of the war: in winter and early spring, the Airborne Forces suffered the greatest damage, followed by the Motorised Rifle troops.

By the end of 2022 and the beginning of the next year, losses among prisoners recruited into the Wagner PMC increased markedly. They were formed into “assault groups” to overwhelm Ukrainian positions near Bakhmut.

By March 2023, prisoners became the largest category of war losses. After the capture of Bakhmut, there have been no cases of mass use of prisoners so far.

By September 2024, volunteers once again emerged as the largest category among the KIA. This shift reflects a cumulative effect: prison recruitment had significantly waned, no new mobilisation had been announced, yet the stream of volunteers continued unabated.

By April 11, the death of nearly 4,900 officers of the Russian army and other security agencies had been confirmed.

The proportion of officer deaths among overall casualties has steadily declined since the conflict began. In the early stages, when professional contract soldiers formed the main invasion force, officers accounted for up to 10% of fatalities. By November 2024, this figure had dropped to between 2–3%—a shift that reflects both evolving combat tactics and the intensive recruitment of volunteer infantry, who suffer casualty rates many times higher than their commanding officers.

Officers killed in Ukraine

To date, reports of the deaths of two deputy army commanders have been officially confirmed—Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky of the 41st Army and Major General Vladimir Frolov of the 8th Army.

On May 22, 2022, fighter pilot, 63-year-old retired Major General Kanamat Botashev died; most likely, he went to war as a volunteer. The deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Captain 1st Rank Andrei Paliy, was also killed. On June 5, 2022, the death of Major General Roman Kutuzov was reported.

In June 2023, Major General Sergei Goryachev was killed. He was the chief of staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army and commanded the repulsion of the Ukrainian counterattack in the Zaporizhzhia region.

In July 2023, the death of the first Lieutenant General was confirmed—Oleg Tsokov, deputy commander of the Southern Military District.

In November 2023, Major General Vladimir Zavadsky was killed. He was the deputy commander of the 14th Army Corps.

In November 2024, Major General Pavlo Klimenko, commander of the 5th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade (former DPR ‘Oplot’ Brigade), died. According to the pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel Spy’s Dossier, he was fatally wounded on November 6: Klimenko was attacked by an FPV drone while riding a motorbike between command posts.

The date of death of servicemen is specified in over 80,300 reports. The number of losses per day according to this data hardly reflects the real picture, but it allows us to assume on which days the battles were the most intense.

It should always be taken into account that the data of the last few weeks is the most incomplete and may change significantly in the future.

Age is mentioned in 87,000 reports. In the first six months of the war, when the regular army participated in the invasion without volunteers, mobilised soldiers, and prisoners, most deaths were in the 21–23 age group.

Volunteers and mobilised soldiers are significantly older: people voluntarily go to war at 30–35 years or older, and the mobilised are generally over 25.