Human Waves, Tiny Gains: Russia’s Ukraine War Becomes the Deadliest Disaster of the Modern Era

Russia has paid an exceptionally high price for marginal territorial gains in its war against Ukraine, according to a new assessment by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Nearly four years after the start of the full-scale invasion, Russian forces have suffered close to 1.2 million casualties, a figure the think tank says exceeds the losses of any major power in any conflict since World War II.

The estimate includes soldiers killed, wounded or missing. Of these, CSIS calculates that around 325,000 Russian troops have been killed since February 2022. To put the scale into perspective, the total number of Russian casualties roughly matches the population of Brussels. The report stresses that no large military power has experienced losses of this magnitude in a single war over the past eight decades.

By comparison, US battlefield losses in major post-war conflicts were far lower. The United States recorded 54,487 combat deaths during the Korean War and 47,434 during the Vietnam War. Later interventions resulted in even smaller numbers, including 149 deaths in the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War, 2,465 fatalities during operations in Afghanistan, and 4,432 deaths in Iraq.

Despite these enormous human losses, CSIS notes that Russia’s battlefield progress has been extremely limited. In major operations such as the offensive toward Pokrovsk, Russian troops advanced at an average pace of just 15 to 70 meters per day. According to the analysis, this is slower than almost all major offensive campaigns of the past century, including some of the bloodiest battles of World War I. Since the beginning of 2024, Russian forces have captured less than 1.5 percent of Ukrainian territory.

The report also highlights the economic cost of the war for Moscow, arguing that prolonged fighting is pushing Russia toward the status of a second- or even third-tier economic power as sustained military spending and sanctions strain the economy.

CSIS further estimates that Russian losses significantly exceed those of Ukraine. The ratio is assessed at roughly two to two and a half Russian casualties for every Ukrainian one. Ukrainian forces are believed to have suffered between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties in total, including between 100,000 and 140,000 killed since February 2022. Combined losses on both sides could reach 1.8 million and may climb to 2 million by the spring of 2026 if current trends continue.

The think tank attributes Russia’s high casualty figures to a strategy focused on exhausting Ukraine’s military and society through sustained pressure and manpower-intensive assaults. At the same time, it acknowledges that Ukraine has also endured heavy losses while implementing a defence-in-depth approach.

Speaking last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian fatalities had reached around 35,000 per month in December, equivalent to roughly 48 soldiers killed every hour. He noted that a year earlier, monthly Russian deaths were estimated at about 14,000. Ukraine’s Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov added that these losses are documented through video evidence and described reaching 50,000 killed as a strategic objective aimed at exposing Russia’s reliance on manpower as a resource.

Zelensky also stated that Russia currently mobilises between 40,000 and 43,000 troops each month. Neither Kyiv nor Moscow publicly discloses official casualty figures, and CSIS cautions that all wartime estimates remain subject to uncertainty and potential political manipulation.