SEPTEMBER 1st, 2025

Overall:

Fighting grinds on along most of the front with only marginal changes over the last several days. There are several ongoing developments, which, in alignment with the nature of this war, seem to take place in slow motion, but they are happening. Russian forces continue to slowly encircle Kupyansk, and just to the south they continue to push westward to the Oskil River, and in the extended battlefield between Chasiv Yar and Prokovsk, Russian and Ukrainian forces remain locked in a death grip, but overall the Russians appear to retain the initiative. Further south, this is really demonstrated by Russian actions north of Kamyanske, along the Dnepr River, and by Russian elements probing across the Dnepr into Kherson. Russian actions south of the Vovcha River (north-east of Huliaipole, also present a situation which has good deal of negative potential for the Ukrainians.

But, all that said, I am going to use today to give a rundown on casualties.

I will note that everything I have here is nothing but the fruits of my peripatetic search through the internet looking for data. I have a hope that I have massively overstated the number of dead and wounded, but time will tell.

Thoughts

Casualties

Begin with the overall casualty count on the Russians. Writ large, Russian KIAs continue to climb, and now stand between 125,000 and 220,000, per Mediazone, who has the most accurate count of deaths reported in Russia, engaging in a daily “mining” of thousands of social media sites in Russia. My own, “SWAG” places Russian KIAs in the 160,000 range, so I feel comfortable using the Mediazone numbers. At the same time, Russian desertion are estimated to be in the 30,000 - 50,000 range and wounded between 500,000 and 800,000. There is no good figure on Russians held as POWs, but the number is probably not more than 10,000 (on either side). Also, of those wounded, about 70% on each side are returned to active duty (AD).

This leaves the Russian casualty numbers as:

Killed in Action 125,000 - 220,000

Seriously Wounded (no return to AD) 150 - 240,000

Lessor wound up (returned to AD) 350-560,000

Missing or Desertions 30-50,000

POWs 10,000

Total Casualties  665,000 - 1,280,000

Ukrainian losses continue to be more closely held numbers than the Russian numbers, but there are some numbers that give a hint of the number of casualties. Perhaps the most telling is the number of soldiers who have had an arm or leg amputated. As of summer 2023 (15 months into the war), the Ukrainian government admitted that the number was “more than 20,000.” In August of 2023, a German maker of prosthetics reported that more than 50,000 prosthetics had been shipped to Ukraine. Since then there has been anecdotal reporting that the number of amputees continues to climb, and one or two stories have suggested that the rate is holding steady. If there were 50,000 amputees after 18 months, the number after 42 months would certainly be on the order of 120,000; for my purposes here, I am using 100,000.

Loss of a limb normally begins with major wounds on the battlefield. In the case of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the availability of complete air control and aggressive MEDEVAC helicopters and other vehicles meant a large percentage of severely wounded received the medical care necessary to survive. 

Of course, as MEDEVAC capabilities become more constrained, survival rates on the battlefield drop. Whereas the US had a bit fewer than 2,000 amputees and almost 7,000 KIAs in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, that low a ratio would not be suspected on a battlefield such as Ukraine, where movement is much more difficult. Accordingly, the amputee to KIA ratio would be lower than 2 to 7. This strongly suggests that Ukrainian KIAs is well in excess of 200,000.

Note to that the tracking of amputations in the US military is related to number wounded, and in Iraq and Afghanistan the number was about 5% of total wounded, or 7.5% of those with major limb wounds. But using that number for a relevant ratio would produce an otherwise unrealistic casualty count…in short, I’m trying to hold the numbers down. Said differently, there is some data available that suggests that the Ukrainian casualty count is substantially higher than what I am estimating below. 

Also, while some percentage of these amputations are civilians, given the nature of the battlefield and the difficulties involved with MEDEVAC in a high drone threat environment, it remains difficult to construct a scenario in which the Ukrainian Army amputation ratio relative to KIAs, given their MEDEVAC limits, is 2 to 7. In short, there are likely a good deal more KIAs than I suggest below, if this amputation data is at all accurate.

What this means is a KIA count of 200,000 (at least) and so the Ukrainian casualty numbers might look like this, though the Ukrainians have far more desertions. We will begin with the current number of desertions, but more on that below:

Killed in Action 200,000

Seriously Wounded (no return to AD) 240,000

Lessor wound up (returned to AD) 560,000

Missing or Desertions 100,000

POWs 10,000

Total Casualties  1,110,000

Now, consider this: at the start of the war it was known that the Ukrainian army was about 200,000 strong, with 200,000 ready reserves, and a tentative plan to increase the reserve force to somewhere near the neighborhood of 800,000 - 900,000, so starting total force was 400,000 troops.

After the war started the Ukrainians started bringing folks in at a rate approaching 20,000 per month and sustained that through the end of the summer (2022). 

There are several fairly solid data points (all of these are from Ukrainian government people):

By the middle of summer 2024 the rate of new soldiers had reached nearly 27,000 and has remained in that range (this per President Zelenskyy). At one point in 2024 the Ukrainian government claimed they had 1,260,000 folks in uniform, including Air Force, Navy, and Special Services, leaving a bit more than 1,100,000 in the army. Since then they have continued to use the number 880,000 troops in the army, with no explanation covering the 200,000 man difference.

Note that no one has been allowed to leave active duty (actually a small handful have, but it is very small, my guess is that it is no more than a few percentage points). We know that more than 100,000 had been charged with desertion (as of December 2024), and the rate had passed (heading north) 6,000 more per month. And, 70% of wounded return to active duty.

Where does that leave us?

Begin with 400,000 in uniform at the end of February 2022, and, rounding up, there are 900,000 in uniform right now. How many have been called into service?

42 months have passed and for the first 30 months they were taking in personnel at a rate of, on average, 23,500 / month: 705,000

For the next 12 months they have been taking people in at a rate of 27,000 / month: 324,000

So, total folks who have been in uniform: 1,429,000. Rounding up, call it 1,500,000 And desertion (100,000 + 6,000 x 8) =148,000 148,000 desertion. Rounding down, call it 140,000 (there are worse numbers for desertion, but I’m using some more moderate figures). The total served, less casualties and desertions is about 900,000, so there is a difference of 460,000, which presumably are those either killed in action or wounded and discharged.

So, again rounding down, 400,000 equals the number of personnel killed or severely wounded. Assuming 4 wounded to 1 killed, and 30% of those wounded do not return to active duty, the total numbers would be:

Total brought into uniform: 1,500,000

Killed in Action 182,000

Seriously Wounded (no return to AD) 218,000

Lessor wounded (return to AD) 510,000

Missing or desertions 140,000

POWs 10,000

Total casualties 1,060,000

Total currently on active Duty (total brought in minus KIAs, seriously wounded, deserted and POWs): 910,000

Which is essentially the number the government is using (880,000 vs 910,000).

What this says is that both sides appear to be suffering roughly equal numbers of casualties, though if there is an error above, the numbers that appear to be “softest” are the Ukrainian numbers, that is, the Ukrainians may have substantially larger casualty figures.

v/r pete