Russia Lost Half a Million Troops in Ukraine: Kyiv

Russia has lost more than half a million troops since the start of its full-scale invasion, according to Ukraine's latest figures, signaling the huge cost Vladimir Putin's war is having on his own personnel.

In its latest update on Saturday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that Russian forces had lost 1,140 troops the previous day—the 12th day in a row that its estimate was more than 1,000.

The daily tally, which includes those who are both killed and injured, has been creeping up in recent months, especially as Russian momentum has been gathering in the Donetsk oblast, and two weeks into an offensive in the north-east of Kharkiv where Moscow's troops have captured settlements by the border.

On May 12, the tally hit a record 1,740, beating the previous record from October 19, 2023, of 1,380 personnel. That previous record was also beaten three times in the last fortnight, with 1510 troop losses reported on May 14; 1,410 on May 16; and 1,400 on May 19.

But Friday's total has brought the number of losses since the war started on February 24, 2022, to the grim milestone of 500,080. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment on the claims by Ukraine.

As Newsweek has previously reported, casualty counts and equipment losses are notoriously difficult to pin down, and experts caution that both sides likely inflate the other's reported losses. But the figures do offer some indication of the scale of the war's impact, deep into its third year and as Russia launches a new offensive in northeastern Ukraine.

Getting an accurate count on Russian losses is tricky, and Moscow has not updated its figure since September 2022 when it said the death toll stood at 5,937, which at the time was considered by Western experts as an underestimate.

Ukraine's figures are broadly in line with other estimates by its allies, with French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné saying on May 3 that Paris believes Russian military losses stood "at 500,000, including 150,000 deaths."

British Armed Forces Minister Leo Docherty said last month that the U.K. estimates Russian losses at over 450,000 "killed or wounded, and tens of thousands more have already deserted." However, he said the number of troops serving with Russian private military companies was "not clear."

Meanwhile, a U.S. intelligence report from December put Russian losses at 315,000 which it said represented 90 percent of its pre-invasion force and was not far short at the Ukrainian figure at the time of 340,650.

An ongoing open-source investigation by Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet, working with BBC Russia, puts the number of confirmed dead Russian soldiers as of Saturday at 54,185 based on public records, although the project says that the real number is much higher.

Putin signed a decree in December 2023 giving families of soldiers killed in the war 5 million rubles ($55,450) and 3 million rubles ($33,270) to those wounded. Despite the losses, more than 100,000 men signed contracts during the first three months of 2024, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

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