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War

General Staff: Russia has lost 1,540,700 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022

• 2 min read
General Staff: Russia has lost 1,540,700 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022
A photographer wearing protective gear looks at a destroyed car standing in the middle of the road on September 4, 2026 in Druzhkivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. (Yan Dobronosov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Russia has lost around 1,540,700 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported on Oct. 4.

The number includes 1,750 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.

According to the report, Russia has also lost 12,391 tanks, 25,483 armored combat vehicles, 157,258 vehicles and fuel tanks, 50,686 artillery systems, 2,179 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,686 air defense systems, 443 aircraft, 356 helicopters, 2,837 unmanned ground vehicles, 35 ships and boats, and two submarines.

Ukraine's General Staff has not revealed its own losses during the full-scale invasion, citing operational secrecy.

Independent Western think-tank reports agree that the Russian casualties significantly surpass Ukraine's losses, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimating the ratio to be "roughly 2.5:1 or 2:1."

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 (KIA).

While Ukrainian officials rarely disclose the figure, President Volodymyr Zelensky told France TV on Feb. 4 that at least 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action since the beginning of the full-scale war, in addition to significant numbers who are missing in action.

The intensity of Russian drone attacks and the fighting has made it extremely difficult for Ukraine to retrieve the bodies of fallen soldiers, which are needed for DNA confirmation.

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Polina Moroziuk

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Polina Moroziuk is a junior reporter at the Kyiv Independent. She holds an MSc in Human Rights and Politics from the London School of Economics and a BSc from the University of Amsterdam. Before joining the newsroom, she worked in human rights advocacy and as a project assistant at a research and consultancy organisation, supporting projects for international organisations including UNICEF and War Child, with a focus on Ukraine and the Middle East.

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