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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Russia is rapidly approaching 1.5 million casualties in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian figures, as Kyiv warns that Russia is mulling over ways to replenish its ranks with no peace deal on the horizon.
Casualty counts are hard to verify in conflicts, and experts warn that both sides will inflate their enemies' losses while being tight-lipped about their own to keep up morale, maintain foreign support and strengthen negotiating positions in peace talks.
Russia has suffered 1,460,400 casualties since the invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, Ukraine's military said on Tuesday. The tally includes soldiers slain in the conflict, as well as troops who were injured. Many will have returned to the frontlines or been repeatedly wounded.
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Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
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Western estimates generally put the number of Russian personnel killed, injured and missing slightly lower than Kyiv's tally, and the U.K.'s GCHQ spy agency estimated in May that close to 500,000 Russian troops have been killed in the conflict.
Russia's independent Mediazona outlet and the BBC's Russian service have confirmed the identities of 236,066 Russian officers and soldiers slain in the war.
Moscow has taken up to 450,000 battlefield deaths since the start of the war, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank said last month. That is more than nine times higher than the number of Soviet and Russian soldiers killed in all of Moscow's wars combined since 1945.
Russia's overall casualties stand at an "astounding" 1.4 million, the CSIS said. Ukraine's likely casualty count touched 625,000, including up to 150,000 people killed, for the same period, according to the think tank.
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Analysts say elite, professional Russian soldiers made up most of the losses in the early months of the war, but the death toll among volunteers in the armed forces surged by the second half of 2022.
As the months wore on, prisoners from Russian jails ushered into the military ranks and members of the now-dismantled Wagner mercenary group were more often killed in operations than other chunks of the armed forces.
Often, these soldiers were used in "meat-grinder" assaults" in which waves of soldiers are thrown at heavily fortified Ukrainian positions to wear down Kyiv's defenses. They are known for buying small pieces of territory slowly, and at an eye-watering human cost.
Volunteers once again became the largest category among those killed in action by fall 2024. Moscow has also relied on foreign fighters in the Russian military, as well as a small number of North Korean troops.
Russia has offered huge financial incentives for people to join up, swerving the need to mobilize Russian citizens and risk deepening the impact the war is having on everyday life inside the country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to call up as many as 500,000 people for military service this fall, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last month.
When Putin called up 300,000 reservists in the fall of 2022, protests broke out across Russia and tens of thousands of people fled the country to avoid serving in the military.
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Up to 50,000 North Korean soldiers could be deployed to Russian territory, Zelensky said over the weekend, a marked increase from his previous estimate that an additional 30,000 troops may be heading to Russian soil from the Korean peninsula.
Pyongyang sent an estimated 14,000 troops to Russia in 2024 as Moscow battled a shock incursion by Ukrainian forces into the western Kursk region that was ultimately defeated with the help of North Korean soldiers by March 2025.
Several thousand North Korean soldiers have been killed, according to South Korean politicians.
Russia has intensified its strikes on Ukraine in recent weeks, using ballistic and hypersonic missiles Kyiv struggles to hit because of shortages of interceptor missiles.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has doggedly targeted Russia's oil refineries and warehouses belonging to the country's biggest online retailer, Wildberries.
Peace talks between the two countries and the U.S. ended in February without a deal. The U.S. launched its ongoing war against Iran on February 28.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Fitzpatrick and Dave Siminoff.
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