Russia suffers heaviest losses since WWII as number of casualties in Ukraine conflict revealed

Russia has likely lost over one million soldiers in the meat grinder of Eastern Ukraine since President Vladimir Putin decided to invade a neighboring sovereign country, new research indicates.

The analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) paints a grim picture more reminiscent of World War One than any other modern conflict, with Russian forces reportedly paying for every mile of territory gained with thousands of lives.

The scale of the reported losses are difficult to comprehend. In 2025, according to the analysis, Russia suffered as many casualties every six weeks as the US lost in the entire 19 years of the Vietnam War.

But despite this massive human cost, estimated at 1.2 million casualties (those killed, wounded, and missing), the Russian bear has only managed to snap up approximately 12 percent of Ukraine's landmass between February 2022 and December 2025.

Hundreds of thousands have died in the fields of Ukraine since 2022 (Dmytro Smolienko/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Of this total, the CSIS estimated roughly 275,000 to 325,000 Russian soldiers had died since the start of the invasion - the largest number of combat deaths since World War Two.

While this fresh report from the Washington think tank paints a different picture to that presented by many who think the war's outcome is an inevitable Russian victory, it also showed the grim impact it has had on the male fighting age population of Ukraine - where all men over 25 are conscripted into service.

Ukraine, whose population is said to be around five times smaller than Russia's, has reportedly seen between 500,000 and 600,000 battlefield casualties since the outbreak of the conflict.

Of this total, up to 140,000 are believed to have been killed.

In addition to this revealing analysis about the scale of death taking place on the frontlines in Eastern Europe, the CSIS report also detailed how much land Russia has managed to snap up in 2025, when it deployed North Korean troops, prisoners, and enlisted men from around the world to reinforce its numbers.

Ukrainian conscripts are defending every inch of soil with their lives (Richart Barbeira/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Unlike in the first days of its invasion of Ukraine and attack on Kharkiv in 2022, when Russian forces were reportedly capturing up to 7,400 meters of territory per day, the rate of advancement since 2024 has ground to almost a halt.

Two of the main focal points for Putin's army, the areas around Donetsk and Kharkiv, have seen many units paying a blood cost for just meters of land - with the average rate of advancement sitting below 25 yards per day on both fronts.

This crawling pace of advance through mines, drones, and mile after mile of Ukrainian trenches, is slower than any other army in any other major conflict in the past 100 years, according to the CSIS report.

The reports depicts a vastly different image of the blood soaked conflict that's often presented to the public, where Putin's much larger army and war economy are treated as the inevitable victors in the war.

Instead, Ukraine's against-the-odds defense of its territorial integrity and sovereignty against a much larger power appears to have been largely successful.

"A close look at the data suggests that Russia is hardly winning and, even more interestingly, that Russia is increasingly a declining power," the report states.

Yet in a war of attrition, it is not your ability to win set-piece battles or kill enemy soldiers that ends the bloodshed, it is the capacity of you citizens to weather the horror of your losses. With the report estimating that casualty totals could reach two million by Spring this year.