There have been few reliable data of human losses in the war of Ukraine. The estimates vary widely. The official number, especially on the Ukrainian side, are formed by propaganda.
In February of this year the (acting) President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelinski said that 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since February 2022:
The last time Zelensky gave an update on Ukraine’s casualties was in December 2024, when he put deaths at 43,000.
In his interview with French television, he said: “In Ukraine, officially the number of soldiers killed on the battlefield – either professionals or those conscripted – is 55,000.”
The official number of dead cited by Zelensky is considerably lower than Ukraine’s total losses. As he said himself, “a large number of people” are registered as missing.
As of six months ago, Ukraine’s interior ministry had recorded more than 70,000 people as officially missing – both soldiers and civilians – but the breakdown is never given.
The true figure may be higher – information about the number of dead is highly sensitive and affects morale.
Five month later Zelenski’s number had shrunk by 5,000:
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an interview with Fox News reported 50,000 killed and 400,000 wounded Ukrainian servicemen.
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“Let’s be honest, I don’t want to be too frank about this because the Russians will understand what is happening with our army. So, we have about 50,000 soldiers killed, and approximately 400,000 wounded, and there is a huge number of missing in action,” said the President of Ukraine.
At the end of July 2026, when Zelenski gave the latest number, the war had been waged for 53 months. The average monthly losses for Ukraine, according to his numbers, have thus been some 8,500 dead and wounded per month.
Yesterday the head of the Presidential Office General Kyrylo Budanov made a comment which suggests a different, much higher, number:
Ukraine must mobilize at least 30,000 people monthly to maintain its current position on the battlefield, Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Presidential Office said.
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“Unfortunately, we have to accept it [mobilization] as it is. We cannot do otherwise,” Budanov said, according to Ukrainska Pravda.“We have to find the courage and honestly say: we cannot mobilize fewer than 30,000 people a month. This is the minimum number needed to maintain what we have,” he continued.
The Ukrainian army does not release soldiers from their duty unless they have been severely wounded and/or are otherwise incapable to continuing their service. But there is a significant amount of soldiers who simply walk away, don civilian clothing and go absent without leave. In total that number is estimated to be some 200,000. Over the time of the war that amounts to some 4,000 per month.
As 30,000 new recruits are needed per month to maintain what Ukraine has, according to Budanov, there are on average some 26,000 losses per month of dead, missed or severely wounded. (Lightly wounded soldiers will return to service.)
Multiplied by 53 months this sums up to more than 1.3 million Ukrainian casualties.
Give that the Russian side has had -throughout the war- artillery, drone and bombing supremacy, it is highly likely that Ukrainian losses are significant higher that those on the Russian side.
Claims by the Ukrainian General Staff that Russia has had more than 1.48 million casualties seem therefore not to be realistic. (It is not even clear if that count is only of dead or includes wounded).
Unrealistic are also numbers spread these days by “western officials”:
While Russia is still acquiring new battlefield recruits at speed, with an estimated rate of 1,000 a day, in the last two months even this has not been sufficient to replace those killed or injured.
“We estimate that the gap between the number of people Russia is losing to casualties and the number they’re being able to recruit is around 6,000 a month at the moment,” one western official said.
An estimate of 36,000 Russian casualties per month is obviously bonkers.
At the end of 2025 the anti-Russian Meduza and Mediazona outlets claimed to have documented the death of 218,000 Russian soldiers and estimated a total, not documented, loss for Russia of 350,000. That would, on average, be 6,600 per month.
Even after the war in Ukraine has ended it will historians take years to come up with the real numbers of losses on either side.
Budanov’s claim, that 30,000 new soldiers per month are needed for Ukraine “to maintain what we have”, is probably in the ballpark of what historians will find.