Pedestrians walk past a residential building with a patriotic mural depicting a Ukrainian soldier in Kyiv. AFP
Tuesday's report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies came less than a month before the fourth anniversary of Ukraine’s war, which began on Feb. 24.
As the war grinds through another bitterly cold winter, the CSIS report claimed Russia suffered 1.2 million casualties, including up to 325,000 troop deaths, between February 2022 and December 2025.
Al-Ahram Online was unable to verify the figures from independent sources.
“Despite claims of battlefield momentum in Ukraine, the data shows that Russia is paying an extraordinary price for minimal gains and is in decline as a major power,” the report said. “No major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war since World War II."
It is estimated that Ukraine, with its smaller army and population, suffered between 500,000 and 600,000 military casualties, including up to 140,000 deaths.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv gives timely data on military losses, and each side seeks to amplify the other side’s casualties.
Commenting on the report, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that the research could not be considered “reliable information” and that only Russia’s Ministry of Defense was authorized to provide information on military losses.
The ministry’s last statement on battlefield deaths was in September 2022, when it said that just under 6,000 Russian soldiers had been killed. It has not released any updated figures since then.
There was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian government.
In an interview with NBC in February 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the war began.
The report estimated that at current rates, combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties may be as high as 1.8 million and could reach 2 million by spring.
The figures from the CSIS were compiled using the Washington, D.C.-based think tank’s own analysis, data published by independent Russian news site Mediazona with the BBC, estimates by the British government, and interviews with state officials.
A war of attrition
Mediazona, together with the BBC and a team of volunteers, has so far collected the names of over 160,000 troops killed by scouring news reports, social media, and government websites.
The report also claimed that Russian forces were advancing at a sluggish pace since they seized the initiative on the battlefield in 2024, despite their much larger size.
Russia’s advance in Ukraine has largely settled into a grinding war of attrition, and analysts say that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in no rush to find a settlement, despite his army’s difficulties on the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.
The report said Russian forces have advanced at an average rate of between 15 and 70 meters (49 to 230 feet) per day in their most prominent offensives.
Putin told his annual news conference last month that 700,000 Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine. He gave the same number in 2024, and a slightly lower figure — 617,000 — in December 2023.
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