2 soldiers a minute — Russia suffers record losses on Nov. 8, General Staff says
on Google
Russia suffered a record-breaking number of casualties on the front lines on Nov. 8, totaling 2,980 soldiers either killed or seriously injured in a day, Ukraine's General Staff said.
"One less invader every 29 seconds," the General Staff said on its Telegram on Nov. 9.
The report comes a day after the General Staff reported Russian casualties reaching 400,000 since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
The previous record for Russian daily personnel losses was 2,500, reported just a week prior on Nov. 1, 2026. October 2026 was the deadliest month for Russian troops since the start of the full-scale invasion, according to Ukraine's General Staff.
"The Russian command continues to send units on suicidal assaults, while our soldiers repel these attacks day after day," the General Staff said.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine have publicly disclosed its casualties on the front lines, citing operational secrecy. Sporadic third-party reports have helped shed light on the usually hidden casualty figures.
On Nov. 7, hacker groups Belarusian Cyberpartisans and Silent Crow, who claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Russia's Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), said that leaked death records indicate between 394,000 and 450,000 people fighting on Russia's side or otherwise linked to the war have died since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The groups said they obtained the records from Rosstat's internal demography database, containing information from death certificates registered between February 2022 and August 2026.
The Kyiv Independent could not immediately verify the authenticity of the leaked records or the groups' casualty estimates.
Meanwhile, a January 2026 CSIS report said Ukraine has likely suffered between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties from February 2022 to December 2025, of which between 100,000 and 140,000 are thought to be killed in action.
The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify the Russian losses.
