Dueling claims on Ukrainian losses

What we know

On February 25, Volodymyr Zelensky said during a press conference that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a rare admission from the Ukrainian side. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, on the other hand, claimed two days later that Ukraine had lost 444,000. Ukrainian volunteer project UALosses, which uses open-source data, has verified the deaths of over 42,000 Ukrainian soldiers, although the real number could be higher (but certainly nowhere near as high as Shoigu claims). Meduza explains what these numbers mean, and what the real losses for both Ukraine and Russia might be.

On February 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a press conference at the “Ukraine. Year 2024.” forum that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion two years earlier. Zelensky did not provide information regarding the number of Ukrainian soldiers who have been injured or are considered missing in action. Casualty data in Ukraine is a closely-held secret, and this was the first admission since December 2022, Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, said that 10,000–13,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed.

The Ukrainian president also said that, according to his assessment, 180,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of the war. He added that, when including wounded soldiers, 500,000 was the total number of Russian casualties.

On February 27, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu gave a rather different assessment: that Ukraine had lost not 31,000 soldiers, but 444,000. “On average, since the beginning of the year, the enemy has been losing more than 800 personnel and 120 pieces of assorted weaponry, including foreign-made ones, on a daily basis,” he said.

Reliable information on Ukrainian and Russian losses

UALosses, a volunteer project that collects data on Ukrainian losses, has documented more than 42,000 killed Ukrainian soldiers since February 24, 2022. At the time of this publication, using open sources such as Ukrainian media, social media posts, and memorials to the dead, the project has counted 42,152 deaths. UALosses does not include missing soldiers or Ukrainian citizens killed in militias from the self-proclaimed “LNR” or “DNR” in their count. Both Meduza and Mediazona consider UALosses to be a reliable source of information.

Meduza and Mediazona compared the UALosses database with a similar open-source database maintained by Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service with the support of volunteers to count Russian losses. Both the Russian and Ukrainian lists have similar numbers. However, that does not mean losses on both sides are equal. Using Russia’s Inheritance Case Registry, we know the ratio of the dead found in open sources to the total losses killed quite accurately: on average, for every mention in open sources there are 1.8-2 real dead. Meduza estimates that, up to the end of 2023, Russia has lost around 75,000 soldiers in Ukraine.

Open-source data in Ukraine, where there are no restrictions on publishing obituaries or posthumous award lists, is considered to be much closer to the true picture than in Russia. Even so, it is unlikely that the UALosses list is complete. Meduza estimates that the range of open-source dead to real dead could be anywhere from 1:1 to 2:1.

If we assume the unlikely scenario in which the UALosses database is complete, the ratio of Russian to Ukrainian fatalities is 1.8-2 to 1. According to Meduza’s calculations, this is the maximum possible estimate “from above” in favor of Ukraine. This estimate, however, does not line up with Zelensky’s positing in a Fox News interview that Russia loses five soldiers for every one that Ukraine loses.

Ned Garvey, with support from Meduza’s Explainers team