A new report warns that combined war casualties in Russia’s war in Ukraine could soon reach two million

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A new report warns that the number of soldiers killed, wounded or missing on both sides in Russia’s war in Ukraine could reach two million by spring, with Russia suffering the highest number of military deaths recorded for any major power since World War II.

Tuesday’s report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies comes less than a month before the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

As the war grinds into another bitterly cold winter, a Russian airstrike attacked an apartment block on the outskirts of Kiev on Wednesday, killing two people. Nine others were injured in the attacks in the Ukrainian cities of Odessa and Krivy Rih and in the front-line Zaporizhzhia region.

The CSIS report said Russia suffered 1.2 million casualties between February 2022 and December 2025, including 325,000 military deaths.

“Despite claims of battlefield momentum in Ukraine, statistics show 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 so many casualties or deaths in any war since World War II.”

It is estimated that Ukraine, with its small army and population, suffered 500,000 to 600,000 military casualties, including 140,000 deaths.

Neither Moscow nor Kiev provide timely statistics on military casualties, and each side seeks to inflate the other’s casualties.

Commenting on the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the investigation could not be considered “reliable information” and that only Russia’s Defense Ministry was authorized to provide information on military casualties.

The ministry’s last statement on battlefield deaths was in September 2022, when it said only 6,000,000 Russian soldiers had been killed. It has not released any updated data since then.

There was no immediate response from the Ukrainian government.

In a February 2025 interview with NBC, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the war began.

The report estimates that at current rates, combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties could exceed 1.8 million and reach 2 million by spring.

The CSIS figures were compiled using the Washington, DC-based think tank’s own analysis, data published by the BBC along with independent Russian news site Mediazona, British government estimates and interviews with state officials.

War of Liberation

Activists and independent journalists have suppressed reports of military casualties in Russian media.

MediaZona worked with the BBC and a team of volunteers to gather the names of more than 160,000 soldiers killed so far by looking at news reports, social media and government websites.

The report also stated that Russian forces were advancing at a slower pace after seizing the initiative on the battlefield in 2024, despite their much larger size.

Russia’s advances in Ukraine have largely ended in a stalemated war, and analysts say Russian President Vladimir Putin is in no rush to find a solution, despite the difficulties facing his troops along the nearly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.

The report said the Russian military advanced at an average rate of between 15 and 70 meters (49 to 230 feet) per day in its most prominent offensives.

That is “slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war of the past century,” the report said.

Putin said at his annual press conference last month that 700,000 Russian troops were fighting in Ukraine. He gave the same number in 2024 and a slightly lower number — 617,000 — in December 2023. It was not possible to verify those figures.

2 people were killed in the attack in Kiev region

Authorities said two people were killed and at least nine others wounded in the attack near the Ukrainian capital on Wednesday.

Mykola Kalashnik, head of the regional military administration, said a man and a woman were killed in the overnight attack in the area of ​​Bylohorod on the outskirts of Kiev.

Officials in the Ukrainian cities of Odessa and Kryvyi Rih, as well as in the Zaporizhzhia region, also reported overnight Russian attacks that injured at least nine people and damaged infrastructure.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched an overnight attack using a ballistic missile and 146 strike drones, 103 of which were shot down or destroyed using electronic warfare.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses had destroyed 75 Ukrainian drones overnight. 24 people were shot dead in Russia’s southwestern Krasnodar region, and 23 people were shot dead in the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2016.

Two drones were reportedly shot down in Russia’s Voronezh region, where Ukraine’s General Staff said it struck the Khokholskaya oil depot on Wednesday. The regional governor, Alexander Gusev, wrote in a telegram that the wreckage of the drone caused the oil production to catch fire, but gave no further details.