Ukraine's military reveals what Russia's war has cost Moscow — in dollars, arms, and lives
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The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces published a video on Oct. 28 detailing the costs of Russia's full-scale invasion over the past four-and-a-half years.
The price of the war is measured in money, weapons, and soldiers — as well as lost opportunities to invest in Russia's future.
The military's video comes on the 1,707th day of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine.
People
Russia has paid a heavy price in blood for every inch of territory occupied in Ukraine. Since Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff calculates that Russia has lost over 1,580,000 personnel.
The casualties include both killed and injured soldiers.
The sum means that Russia loses nearly a thousand people every day, according to the General Staff. Put another way, a Russian soldier dies every 90 seconds.
"This video is three minutes long," the narrator reads.
Equipment
Moscow has lost over $204 billion in military equipment over the course of the war, the military reports.
This includes 12,448 tanks, 51,674 artillery systems, and 25,609 armored combat vehicles. Ukraine also counts 449 destroyed Russian aircraft, 356 helicopters, 35 vessels, and two submarines.
Russia has also lost over five thousand missiles and over 585,000 drones, the military said.
Money
Russia has spent hundreds of billions of dollars waging a war of choice against Ukraine.
In addition to losing billions in destroyed equipment, the Russian government also pays over $95 million per day in compensation for the dead and wounded.
Russia's oil industry has also taken a severe hit due to international sanctions and Ukraine's long-range strikes against refineries, pipelines, and shadow fleet tankers.
In a single year, from August 2025-2026, the industry's total losses reached $13.5 billion, according to the General Staff.
Every year since the start of the all-out invasion, the war has carved an even greater chunk out of the Russian economy. In 2022, the war in Ukraine accounted for 4% of Russia's GDP. In 2025, that number rose to 7.5%.
From spending $86 billion in 2022, Russia spent $190 billion on the war in 2025 and plans to spend another $186 billion in 2026.
In total, Russia has spent over $700 billion on the war against Ukraine.
"With this money, one could build 10,000 kilometers of modern highways, 1,000 new schools, 200 large hospitals, give a million rubles to every child born since the start of the full-scale invasion, pay double the pension to every pensioner for two years, and invest the rest of the money in science, which would be more than Russia has invested in it in the last 10 years," the video says.
The money would also be enough to fund the complete construction of five modern cities of 8-10 million people.
"But Russia chose war," the narrator says.
