In military conflicts, the data of individual countries on the dead and wounded often differ. It is usually difficult to determine how many people have actually been killed or wounded. This is also true of Russia's war against Ukraine.
Neither Moscow nor Kiev regularly report data on their own losses in the four-year-old war. Russia has not even updated its data for more than three years.
At the same time, however, the parties to the conflict like to exaggerate the losses they have inflicted on the enemy. "This is almost always the case," says Sean Davis, an analyst at the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) research project at Uppsala University in Sweden. "In most cases, one's own losses are underestimated and successes are exaggerated," he explains, adding that the motive is as follows: "The fighting spirit of one's own country must be strengthened by emphasizing successes and downplaying the cost of one's own actions."
The project has been in existence for four decades and collects and analyzes data on violent conflicts. For more than 20 years, UCDP has been publishing the results, including the number of victims. "Thanks to the fact that we have such a detailed database of deaths, it is difficult to deny what really happened," Therese Peterson, who is also part of the scientific team, told DW.
How to determine the most accurate data possible
In order to make a realistic estimate of the number of victims in a war, it is important to collect as much information as possible. For this purpose, various sources are used: official statements of the parties to the conflict, reports from hospitals and morgues, eyewitness accounts, media reports from the conflict zones and posts by the population on social networks. Analysts apply certain rules in order to exclude false data and reach reliable results.
The UCDP, for example, usually trusts the "admitted" personal losses of the parties to the conflict, but not necessarily the data they provide on the losses of the enemy. The project counts only deaths, not the wounded or missing, which some observers also include in the statistics. The Swedish researchers say that their numbers can be seen as a "baseline" for monitoring conflicts. Their method is considered conservative.
But there are other methods: according to a recently published report by the US think tank CSIS, Russia has achieved - despite various data submitted - only little military progress in the conflict with Ukraine, and at significant losses.
What are Russia's losses in the war against Ukraine
Based on conversations with US government representatives, data from the British Ministry of Defense and European countries and Ukraine, the Russian media portal Mediazona and BBC Russia arrive at the following approximate numbers for Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine:
- Since the beginning of the war, Russia has suffered nearly 1.2 million losses - this includes dead, wounded and missing. About a third of these losses are due to 2025 alone.
- By December 2025, between 275,000 and 325,000 soldiers from the Russian army had died on the battlefield.
- Ukraine suffered 600,000 casualties, of which between 100,000 and 140,000 died.
"These numbers are staggering. In no war since World War II has any great power suffered such large losses - even approximately", says the summary in the CSIS report regarding Russia's losses.
Regarding the casualties on the Russian side, these numbers coincide with the data of the Swedish UCDP project. "Our estimate is about 350,000 Russian casualties", researcher Sean Davis confirms to DW.
Author: Matthew Ward Ages