Russia Faces Mounting Losses And Slow Gains In Ukraine

As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds into its fourth year, a stark picture emerges from both independent Russian media and Western analysts: the cost in lives is staggering, the gains on the ground are minimal, and the Kremlin’s control over information—both at home and abroad—is tightening. While President Vladimir Putin’s government continues to tout battlefield momentum, the reality on the frontlines and inside Russia’s institutions tells a different, more sobering story.

According to a comprehensive report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Russian forces have suffered approximately 1.2 million casualties since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. This figure, which includes killed, wounded, and missing, dwarfs the losses Russia or the Soviet Union experienced in any conflict since World War II. The CSIS estimates that battlefield fatalities alone range between 275,000 and 325,000 as of the end of 2025—a toll more than 17 times greater than the Soviet Union’s losses in Afghanistan and over five times greater than all Russian and Soviet wars combined since 1945.

Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet, corroborates the scale of the losses through its own painstaking documentation. Their bi-weekly summaries and interactive infographics, last updated on January 30, 2026, provide a granular look at the human cost. The publication maintains a named list of verified losses and uses probate registry data to estimate the total dead. As of August 2025, Mediazona’s estimates suggest that if there are 90,000 lawsuits filed in Russian courts to declare soldiers dead or missing, there are at least 180,000 bodies left unrecovered on the battlefield.

But even these numbers may understate the full extent of the tragedy. In a move that began in late 2025 and accelerated into 2026, Russian courts started systematically removing records of lawsuits related to missing or dead soldiers. By the end of January 2026, an additional 10,000 such records had disappeared from court websites across 50 regions. Mediazona reports that this effort was prompted by a “technical directive” from the Judicial Department, though the existence of such a letter remains unverified. The effect, however, is clear: official records are being scrubbed, making independent verification of losses increasingly difficult.

The Ministry of Defence, under its new chief Andrei Belousov, has shifted tactics. Instead of searching for missing soldiers on the battlefield—a grim and arduous task—military units are now encouraged to turn to the courts for legal declarations of death or disappearance. By December 2025, the military was filing an astonishing 2,500 such lawsuits per week, or 500 per working day. At the Ministry’s end-of-year meeting, Belousov claimed that “the number of located service personnel had tripled; 48% of the total number of missing persons, every second person, had been found.” Yet, as Mediazona notes, these words imply that the remaining half—tens of thousands—are still unaccounted for, their bodies unrecovered and their families left in limbo.

The composition of Russia’s casualties has also shifted over time. In the early months of the war, the brunt of the losses fell on professional airborne and motorized rifle troops. By the summer and fall of 2022, volunteers made up the largest share of the dead. The end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 saw a marked increase in the deaths of prisoners recruited by the Wagner private military company, who were thrown into the fiercest fighting around Bakhmut. After the capture of Bakhmut, the mass use of prisoners declined, and by September 2024, volunteers once again dominated the casualty lists—a reflection of both dwindling prison recruitment and the ongoing stream of volunteer fighters.

Officers have not been spared. As of January 30, 2026, Mediazona confirmed the deaths of 6,353 officers of the Russian army and security agencies. The proportion of officer deaths among overall casualties has steadily declined, from as high as 10% at the start of the conflict to just 2–3% by November 2024. This shift is attributed to both evolving combat tactics and the intensive recruitment of volunteer infantry, who suffer casualty rates many times higher than their commanding officers. Among the fallen are 12 generals, including Lieutenant General Oleg Tsokov (killed in July 2023), Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov (killed by a bomb in Moscow in December 2024), and Major General Vladimir Zavadsky (killed near Krynky in November 2023).

Age data paints a poignant picture: in the first six months of the war, most of the dead were young men aged 21 to 23, drawn from the ranks of the regular army. As the war dragged on and mobilization efforts expanded, the average age of the deceased rose—volunteers and mobilized men tend to be over 25, many in their 30s or older, often driven by economic necessity or patriotic fervor.

Despite the immense sacrifice, the territorial gains have been meager. The CSIS report details Russia’s slow and costly advances: from late February 2024 to early January 2026, Russian forces advanced just under 50 kilometers near Pokrovsk at an average pace of 70 meters per day. Other offensives saw even slower progress—15 meters per day near Chasiv Yar, 23 meters per day near Kupiansk, and a relatively brisk 297 meters per day near Huliaipole. In 2024, Russian forces seized approximately 3,604 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory—just 0.6% of Ukraine. In 2025, the gains were only marginally larger, at 4,831 square kilometers. Since the initial 2022 invasion, Russia has seized around 75,000 square kilometers and now controls about 120,000 square kilometers, including Crimea and parts of Donbas previously occupied.

These glacial advances are among the slowest of any major offensive campaign in modern military history. The CSIS analysis concludes: “Russia sustains the war through attrition and disinformation rather than decisive gains, creating vulnerabilities that the United States and Europe can exploit.”

Meanwhile, the war’s economic toll is mounting. Russia’s manufacturing sector declined at its fastest rate since March 2022, and economic growth slowed to a paltry 0.6 percent in 2025. While tank factories operate around the clock, other sectors—such as automobile production—have cut shifts. The country’s nominal GDP is now on par with Canada or Italy, and Russia remains a bottom-tier player in artificial intelligence and high technology, with no companies in the global top 100 by market capitalization.

Yet, for all the losses and economic strain, President Putin remains undeterred. The Kremlin continues to project strength, relying on a combination of attrition warfare and aggressive disinformation campaigns to sustain domestic support and confuse international observers. The removal of court records and the anonymization of casualty data are just the latest moves in a broader effort to obscure the true cost of the war from the Russian public and the world.

As the conflict enters yet another year, the gap between official narratives and the grim reality on the ground grows ever wider. For the families of the missing and the dead, and for a nation increasingly defined by sacrifice and secrecy, the war’s true legacy is only beginning to take shape.