Russia’s Grinding War in Ukraine: Massive Losses and Tiny Gains for a Declining Power

https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-grinding-war-ukraine

5 Comments

  1. Flimsy_Pudding1362 on

    > Russian battlefield casualties and fatalities are significantly greater than Ukrainian casualties and fatalities—with a ratio of roughly 2.5:1 or 2:1. Ukrainian forces likely suffered somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties, including killed, wounded, and missing, and between 100,000 and 140,000 fatalities between February 2022 and December 2025. Combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties may be as high as 1.8 million and could reach 2 million total casualties by the spring of 2026

  2. Appropriate_Mess_350 on

    Putin himself asserted back in 2014 that Russian forces “could take Ukraine in two weeks”. Aleksandr Lukashenko had already stated that, in case of war, Kyiv would be taken in “3–4 days”.

  3. Panthera_leo22 on

    I understand the impulse in the West to focus on Russian losses. But it’s clear that Putin doesn’t care and neither does his inner circle. As long as the soldiers being sent aren’t from Moscow or St. Petersburg, repeatedly publishing these articles isn’t going to trigger the reckoning many seem to hope for.

    To Putin, land is land. If a thousand Russians die to seize a small piece of Ukrainian territory, but Ukraine no longer controls it, that’s still a win in his book. Ukraine then has to fight to take it back and that alone makes it a victory for him.