Distinguishing Genuine Losses from Propaganda Claims

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches its fourth anniversary, the conflict has earned the grim distinction of becoming Europe’s bloodiest war since World War II. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), combined casualties on both sides have reached approximately 1.8 million and could surpass 2 million by spring 2026.

In this war, casualty figures themselves have become weaponized. Both Russia and Ukraine classify information about their own losses while actively publishing data on enemy casualties. This creates a “fog of war” where numbers become instruments of information operations, making the pursuit of truth increasingly difficult.

The reliability of Russian military briefings has come under scrutiny through mathematical analysis. One powerful tool for testing statistical reliability is Benford’s law, which describes how the first digits in naturally occurring datasets follow a logarithmic distribution rather than appearing with equal frequency. In organic datasets, the digit 1 appears first about 30.1% of the time, while 9 appears first only 4.6% of the time.

When applied to Russia’s daily reports of Ukrainian casualties, these figures show statistically significant deviations from Benford’s law. Russia’s Ministry of Defense regularly claims destruction of precise numbers of Ukrainian personnel and equipment – figures like “1,075 Ukrainian service members destroyed” in a single day or daily enemy losses of “1,495” or “1,245” personnel. Statistical analysis reveals that Russian military officers likely generate these figures either algorithmically or manually to create an illusion of precision and operational success.

The fabricated nature of these reports becomes even more evident when examining Russia’s claims about destroyed Ukrainian equipment. As of February 2026, Russia claims to have destroyed more than 670 Ukrainian military aircraft and 283 helicopters – when Ukraine’s entire pre-war air force consisted of only 318 aircraft, including just 98 combat aircraft and 112 helicopters. Even adding all aircraft transferred by partner countries since 2022 (roughly 150 units), Ukraine’s total aviation fleet has never approached the 953 aircraft Russia claims to have destroyed.

Similar mathematical impossibilities appear in Russia’s claims about destroying 27,704 Ukrainian tanks and armored fighting vehicles – far exceeding Ukraine’s entire pre-war inventory of approximately 8,165 such vehicles.

For assessing Russia’s own losses, researchers have turned to civilian administrative records rather than military statements. Projects by Mediazona and BBC Russian Service have compiled a name-by-name list of 177,433 dead Russian soldiers as of February 2026, based on obituaries, cemetery photographs, and database leaks. This represents only a lower bound, as not all deaths are publicly reported.

To establish a more comprehensive picture, researchers analyzed excess inheritance cases opened for Russian men under 50 compared to pre-war periods. This mathematical model indicated approximately 219,000 Russian deaths by August 2025, likely reaching 300,000 by the end of 2025. This correlates with Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) data showing excess mortality among Russian men aged 20-54 of 138,500 in just the first two years of the full-scale invasion.

International estimates largely align with these figures. CSIS places Russia’s total losses (killed, wounded, and missing) at 1.2 million, with irrecoverable losses (killed) reaching up to 325,000. The UK’s Secret Intelligence Service estimated about 1 million Russian casualties, including 240,000 killed, as of September 2025. These figures match the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff’s estimate of more than 1.25 million Russian casualties.

Regarding Ukrainian losses, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated in February 2026 that 55,000 Ukrainian service members had been killed, with a “large number” still missing in action (estimated between 35,000-84,500). CSIS estimates Ukraine’s total military losses at 500,000-600,000, with irrecoverable losses between 100,000-140,000. The independent UALosses project, which maintains a name-by-name list based on public obituaries, had confirmed more than 92,000 dead Ukrainian service members by early 2026.

These figures indicate Ukrainian Armed Forces losses are approximately 2-2.5 times lower than Russia’s, suggesting significantly higher effectiveness of Ukraine’s military operations.

The nature of the conflict has fundamentally changed due to technological developments. The widespread proliferation of FPV drones, aerial reconnaissance systems, and Starlink integration has negated Russia’s numerical advantage and made traditional mechanized warfare extremely costly. Russia has lost more than 13,800 armored vehicles (exceeding its entire pre-war active fleet) and has been forced to abandon massed mechanized assaults in favor of small infantry group attacks.

This tactical degradation has resulted in extreme casualty-to-territory ratios. In 2024-2025, Russia’s army lost an average of 102 soldiers (killed and wounded) for every square kilometer of Ukrainian territory captured. In 2025 alone, Russia managed to capture less than 1% of Ukraine’s territory at an enormous human cost.

To sustain this war effort, the Kremlin has created what researcher Vladislav Inozemtsev calls “Deathonomics” – an economy built around death compensation. Geographic analysis of casualties reveals that Russia’s “blood tax” is paid disproportionately by the poorest regions, where the risk of death for local men is 25 times higher than for residents of Moscow or St. Petersburg. The regime effectively buys population loyalty by paying substantial sums for casualties, creating a paradoxical consumption boom in Russia’s provincial regions.

This economic model is unsustainable. The loss of hundreds of thousands of working-age men has created an acute labor shortage, while defense production operates continuously, producing equipment that is subsequently destroyed in Ukraine. Russia’s GDP growth has fallen to approximately 1%, forcing the government to raise taxes and cut funding for civilian sectors.

As the conflict enters its fifth year, Russia appears to be pursuing a “madman strategy” on the geopolitical stage – demonstrating a willingness to expend unlimited human resources to convince Western leaders that Ukrainian resistance is futile. At the 2026 Munich Security Conference, President Zelenskyy criticized this approach, comparing Western pressure for Ukrainian territorial concessions to the Munich Agreement of 1938.

The war in Ukraine has triggered irreversible transformations in military strategy and tactics, undermining traditional laws of mechanized warfare while revealing the unsustainable nature of Russia’s human-wave approach to combat. Despite Moscow’s willingness to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives, its war of attrition appears to be steadily approaching a critical breaking point.