Foreign Affairs

Here’s The Casualty Count Of The Russia-Ukraine War So Far

Ukraine has lost 100,000 troops, roughly the same number as Russia has over nine months of war, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York, America’s top general said that the latest Pentagon estimates suggest both sides have seen at least 100,000 soldiers killed or wounded, Reuters reported. That number is about 12,000 higher than the official count on Russian losses from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense as of Nov. 10, and at least 50,000 higher than the latest U.S. intelligence estimates, from April, of Ukrainian killed or wounded, according to The New York Times.

“You’re looking at well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded. Same thing probably on the Ukrainian side. A lot of human suffering,” Milley said, according to Reuters.

Ukraine’s armed forces chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, pegged the number killed at 9,000 in August, possibly the only public estimate given since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, Reuters reported.

The Russian Defense ministry released a rare official statement on Nov. 7 denying high casualty reports among the 155th Separate Guards Marine Brigade engaged in the eastern Donetsk territory, according to The Washington Post.

Brigade members dispatched a letter to a governor of a city in the Russian Far East, where the company normally operates, decrying the “incomprehensible offensive” they were charged with undertaking, the Post reported. “As a result of the ‘carefully’ planned offensive by the ‘great generals,’ we lost about 300 people killed, wounded and missing as well as half the equipment in four days,” the letter read.

In August, the Pentagon said Russia’s casualty count likely fell within the 70,000 to 80,000 range, while acknowledging that fog of war made it difficult to arrive at precise numbers.

Dr. Colin Kahl, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, added he could not confirm the Ukrainian defense ministry’s estimates that it was taking 100 to 200 losses each day, as the armed forces prosecuted a grinding defensive campaign in the eastern Donbas region. Ukraine’s General Staff of the Armed Forces released their own estimate that the military had “liquidated” roughly 42,000 Russian troops in a statement on social media.

CIA Director William Burns’ estimated July 20 that around 15,000 killed Russian troops had been killed in the war, Reuters reported.

Ukrainian troops have advanced in the south, shaping up to take advantage of Russia’s announced withdrawal from Kherson, but warned that Russia intended to transform the key southern stronghold into a “city of death,” Reuters reported.

Zaluzhnyi said he could not confirm whether Russia troops had begun retreating from Kherson, according to Reuters, but Col. Roman Kostenko, chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s Parliament, told the NYT earlier, “We have signs they are pulling out.”

The Ukrainian military previously suspected Russia may attempt a feigned retreat to draw Ukrainian forces into more difficult urban offensive warfare, thrusting Ukrainian forces into the same fighting conditions that have extracted enormous costs from Russia in lives and equipment, according to the NYT.