Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War

Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War
Casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War included six deaths during the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, 14,200–14,400 military and civilian deaths during the war in Donbas (2014–2022), and up to 500,000 estimated casualties during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russian annexation of Crimea
During the Russian annexation of Crimea from 23 February through 19 March 2014, six people were killed. The dead included three protesters, two Ukrainian soldiers and one Russian Cossack paramilitary. On 10 August 2016, Russia accused the Special Forces of Ukraine of conducting a raid near the Crimean town of Armiansk which killed two Russian servicemen. The government of Ukraine dismissed the report as a provocation. Ten people were forcibly disappeared between 2014 and 2016 and were still missing as of 2017.
War in Donbas (before 2022 invasion)
The overall number of estimated deaths in the war in Donbas from 6 April 2014 to 31 December 2021 was 14,200–14,400. This included about 6,500 pro-Russian separatist fighters, 4,400 Ukrainian fighters, and 3,404 civilians. This number includes non-combat military deaths, as well as deaths from mines and unexploded ordnance. The vast majority of the deaths took place in the first year of the war, when major combat took place before the Minsk agreements.
Total deaths
Initially, the known number of Ukrainian military casualties varied widely due to the Ukrainian Army drastically understating its casualties, as reported by medics, activists and soldiers on the ground, as well as at least one lawmaker. Several medical officials reported they were overstretched due to the drastic number of casualties. Eventually, the Ukrainian Defence Ministry stated that the numbers recorded by the National Museum of Military History were the official ones, although still incomplete, with 4,638 deaths (4,500 identified and 138 unidentified) cataloged by 1 December 2021.
According to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 1,175 of the Ukrainian servicemen died due to non-combat causes by 5 March 2021. Subsequently, the military did not publish new figures on their non-combat losses, stating they could be considered a state secret.
Deaths by regions
The following table does not include the 298 deaths from the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 or the deaths of Ukrainian servicemen, which are listed separately.
Missing and captured
By 15 May 2016, the Donetsk region's prosecutors reported 1,592 civilians had gone missing in government-controlled areas, of whom 208 had been located. At the same time, a report by the United Nations stated 1,331–1,460 people were missing, including at least 378 soldiers and 216 civilians. 345 unidentified bodies, of mostly soldiers, were also confirmed to be held at morgues in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast or buried. In all, as of late October, 774 people were missing according to the government, including 271 soldiers. By the end of December 2017, the number of confirmed missing on the Ukrainian side was 402, including 123 soldiers. The separatists also reported 433 missing on their side by mid-December 2016, and 321 missing by mid-February 2022.
As of mid-March 2015, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), 1,553 separatists had been released from captivity during prisoner exchanges between the two sides. Subsequently, Ukraine released another 316 people by late February 2016, according to the DPR and other media reports, while by September, 1,598 security forces members and 1,484 civilians had been released by the rebels. 1,110 separatist fighters and supporters, including 743 civilians, were reportedly still being held by Ukrainian forces as of late March 2016, according to the DPR. They updated the figure of separatist prisoners to 816, including 287–646 civilians, in December. At the end of May 2015, the Ukrainian commander of Donetsk airport, Oleg Kuzminykh, who was captured during the battle for the complex, was released.
In December 2017, a large prisoner exchange took place where the rebels released 73 out of 176 prisoners they were holding, while Ukraine released 306 out of 380 of their prisoners. Out of those that were released by Ukraine, 29 brought to the exchange point refused to go back to separatist-held territory, while 40 who were already previously released did not show up for the exchange. Meanwhile, out of those released by the rebels, 32 were soldiers. This brought the overall number of prisoners released by the rebels to 3,215. Among those still held by the separatists, 74 were soldiers. The number of released prisoners was updated to 3,224 in late June 2018, while the number of those still held by the rebels was put at 113. At the end of December 2019, a new prisoner exchange took place, with Ukraine releasing 124 separatist fighters and their supporters, while 76 prisoners, including 12 soldiers, were returned to Ukraine by the rebels. Another five or six prisoners released by the separatists decided to stay in rebel-controlled territories.
Foreign fighters
Foreign volunteers have been involved in the conflict, fighting on both sides. The NGO Cargo 200 reported that they documented the deaths of 1,479 Russian citizens while fighting as part of the rebel forces. The United States Department of State estimated 400–500 of these were regular Russian soldiers. Two Kyrgyz and one Georgian have also been killed fighting on the separatist side. Additionally, at least 262 foreign-born Ukrainian citizens or foreigners died on the Ukrainian side. One of those killed was the former Chechen rebel commander Isa Munayev.
In late August 2015, according to a reported leak by a Russian news site, Business Life (Delovaya Zhizn), 2,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in Ukraine by 1 February 2015.
Foreign civilians and journalists
At least 306 foreign civilians were killed in the war in Donbas prior to the 2022 invasion:
298 passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli and his Russian fixer and interpreter, activist Andrei Mironov
Four other civilian journalists and media workers from Russia: Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, a correspondent and sound engineer respectively; Anatoly Klyan, a camera operator; and Andrey Stenin, a photojournalist
One Russian civilian killed in the shelling of Donetsk, Russia
One Lithuanian diplomat
Landmines and other explosive remnants
As a consequence of the conflict, large swaths of the Donbas region have become contaminated with landmines and other explosive remnants of war (ERW). According to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine, in 2020 Ukraine was one of the countries most affected by ERW in the world, ad had had nearly 1,200 casualties caused by mines or ERW since the beginning of the conflict in 2014. A report by UNICEF released in December 2019 said that 172 children had been injured or killed due to landmines and other explosives.
Russian invasion of Ukraine
Total casualties
In September 2022, Russia's Ministry of Defence confirmed that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in combat. It also claimed 61,207 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 49,368 wounded by this point. For February, April and September 2023, Russia claimed Ukrainian forces' losses amounted to 43,000 troops. Russia claimed it had 11,000 killed in February. In addition, the DPR confirmed that by 22 December 2022, 4,163 of their servicemen had been killed and 17,329 wounded. Subsequently, leaked US intelligence documents cited the Russian FSB that Russian forces suffered 110,000 casualties by 28 February 2023.
According to BBC News Russian and the Mediazona news website, out of 34,857 Russian soldiers and contractors whose deaths they had documented by 19 October 2023, 7.5 per cent (2,631) were officers, while 8.4 per cent (2,926) were Motorized Rifle Troops and 6.1 per cent (2,116) were members of the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV). In addition, 11.6 per cent (4,056) of Russian soldiers whose deaths had been confirmed were people who were mobilized, while 18.4 per cent (6,410) were convicts. The BBC further stated that "Every week, we discover new evidence of Russian military funerals in different localities of Russia, which were not reported by local authorities. Based on these observations, we can assume that the list of confirmed losses maintained by the BBC contain at least 40–60% fewer names of the dead than actually buried in Russia." Thus, the BBC stated that the actual death toll of Russian forces, counting only Russian servicemen and contractors (i.e. excluding DPR/LPR militia), was over 69,000 by the end of September 2023 "according to the most conservative estimate."
Wagner PMC chief Yevgeny Prigozhin confirmed that his organization had lost over 20,000 troops killed by May 25, 2023. He went on to claim that overall, the Russian military had lost 120,000 dead in Ukraine by late June. He accused the Ministry of Defence of systematically downplaying Russian losses.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that more Russian soldiers died in the first year of the war in Ukraine than in all its other wars since World War II combined, an average 5,000 to 5,800 soldiers a month, vs 13,000 to 25,000 in Chechnya over 15 years and 14,000 to 16,000 in Afghanistan. Thus, the first year of the Ukraine war was 25 times deadlier than Chechnya and 35 times more so than Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Ukraine confirmed it had 10,000 killed and 30,000 wounded by the start of June 2022, while 7,200 troops were missing, including 5,600 captured. At the height of the fighting in May and June 2022, according to president Zelenskyy and presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak, between 100 and 200 Ukrainian soldiers were being killed in combat daily, while presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said 150 soldiers were being killed and 800 wounded daily. Mid-June, Davyd Arakhamia, Ukraine's chief negotiator with Russia, told Axios that between 200 and 500 Ukrainian soldiers were killed every day. By late July, Ukrainian daily losses fell to around 30 killed and about 250 wounded.
As of mid-April 2023, around 7,000 Ukrainian soldiers remained missing, of whom some 60-65 per cent were believed to be prisoners.
Ukrainian estimates of Russian military losses tended to be high, while Russian estimates of their own losses tended to be low. Combat deaths can be inferred from a variety of sources, including satellite imagery and video image of military actions. According to a researcher at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden, regarding Russian military losses, Ukraine engaged in a misinformation campaign to boost morale and Western media were generally happy to accept its claims, while Russia was "probably" downplaying its own casualties. Ukraine also tended to be quieter about its own military fatalities. According to BBC News, Ukrainian claims of Russian fatalitiesincluded the injured as well. Western countries emphasized the Russian military's toll, while Russian news outlets have largely stopped reporting on the Russian death toll. In early June 2022, the Svetlogorsk City Court in the Kaliningrad region ruled that a list of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, published by privately owned news websites, constituted "classified information" and its publication could be considered a criminal offense.
Paul Poast, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, extrapolated and made a prediction in late June 2022, that approximately 125,000 deaths would occur in the first year of the war, based on the daily average fatality rates.
The number of civilian and military deaths is impossible to determine with precision. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) considers the number of civilian casualties to be considerably higher than the one the United Nations are able to certify.
Civilian deaths
By 18 December 2022, OHCHR had recorded 17,595 civilian casualties in Ukraine since February 24 2022: 6,826 killed and 10,769 injured. This included 9,620 (4,036 killed and 5,584 injured) in Donetsk and Luhansk. Of these, 7,519 (3,553 killed and 3,966 injured) occurred on territory covered by the government of Ukraine and 2,101 (483 killed and 1,618 injured) on territory controlled by Russian armed forces or their affiliates. On the one-year anniversary of the invasion, Ukraine's chief prosecutor feared that 100,000 civilians had been killed in the conflict while confirming that 21,500 were still considered to be missing. Meanwhile, the United Nations confirmed that by 24 September 2023, 9,701 civilians had been killed and 17,748 had been injured, but said they believe the real number is higher.
In April 2022 the civilian death toll included more than 200 children. In March 2022, 55 of the war-related child deaths were from the Kyiv area and another 34 were from Kharkiv. On 17 February 2023, the Ukrainian prosecutor general announced that at least 461 children had been killed since the start of the invasion, with a further 923 wounded. Most of these child victims were from the Donetsk region.
On 5 June, OHCHR said it had received information on 287 civilian casualties in the Russian Federation, with 58 killed and 229 injured. and Sergei Askyonovan, Russian-installed head of Crimea, alleged that a Ukrainian attack on drilling platforms in the Black Sea near Crimea had left seven Chernomorneftegaz workers missing. In addition, missiles struck the Polish border village of Przewodów in Lublin Voivodeship on 15 November 2022 and killed two Polish civilians.
Foreign civilians
At least 52 civilian foreign citizens from 24 countries are confirmed to have been killed during the war.
Paul Urey and Dylan Healy, two British aid workers were captured by Russian forces, Healy was charged with 'forcible seizure of power' and undergoing 'terrorist' training, but later released on 22 September 2022 while Urey died in captivity. An American citizen was also detained by pro-Russian separatists forces and accused of 'participation in pro-Ukrainian protests'. He was released on 28 October 2022, and reached Ukrainian-controlled territory by 14 December.
Foreign fighters and volunteers
Excluding the Russian and Ukrainian military casualties, at least 550 combatants and volunteers, foreign citizens or foreign-born, were killed during the war. By January 2023, another 1,000 had been wounded while fighting on the Ukrainian side. Below is a list of the nationalities of foreign volunteers casualties.
A British and a Peruvian citizen were also reported missing while fighting alongside the Ukrainian military, and 20 Kyrgyz went missing while fighting for Russia. A Cuban fighting on the Russian side also said that a number of Cuban fighters had been killed or gone missing during the conflict.
Identification and repatriation
Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations, announced on 27 February 2022, that the country had reached out to the International Committee of the Red Cross for help in the repatriation effort of the bodies of killed Russian soldiers. Due to concerns that Russia was not reporting the number or any casualties of soldiers in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry began issuing appeals that same day for relatives of Russian soldiers to help identify wounded, captured, or killed soldiers. The initiative, called Ishchi Svoikh, appeared aimed in part at undermining morale and support for the war in Russia and was quickly blocked by the Russian government's media regulator the day the initiative began at the request of Russia's Prosecutor-General's Office.
Ukrainian authorities began using facial recognition technology supplied to them by Clearview AI on 12 March 2022, to help identify the deceased, along with potentially using it to uncover Russian spies, vet people at checkpoints and potentially combat misinformation. The Chief Executive of Clearview claimed that the technology could be more effective than matching fingerprints or other identifiable aspects of the individual, although a study by US Department of Energy raised concerns about decomposition reducing its effectiveness. Kyiv authorities have also reached out to the International Commission on Missing Persons, which was formed to help after the 1990s Balkan conflicts and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, and identifies individuals by collecting DNA samples from the deceased and families to cross match. The organization will also document the location of the body and how the individual died.
As Russian soldiers began to retreat the identification of the dead civilians who had been unreported due to communication issues and constant fighting began to be reported. Documentation and identification of the bodies began with many hastily dug graves and rubble being cleared away to photograph and identify the bodies as well as count the number involved. Handwritten tags and passports have been attached to the bodies after identification before they are taken by coroners and officials. In some locations villagers kept track of the deceased, such as in Yahidne, a village north of Kyiv, where they used a school basement wall to write the names of the deceased while under Russian control.
As of late May 2022, Ukrainian authorities had stored at least 137 bodies of Russian soldiers that were collected near Kyiv, as well as 62 in the Kharkiv region. During June, the bodies of 374 Russian soldiers were exchanged for the bodies of 365 Ukrainian servicemen between Ukraine and Russia.
Amputations
On 2 August 2023, a Wall Street Journal investigation found that Ukrainian amputations in the war came to between 20,000 and 50,000 including both military and civilians. In comparison, during World War One 41,000 British and 67,000 Germans needed amputations.
Prisoners of war
Russia claimed to have captured 572 Ukrainian soldiers by 2 March 2022, while Ukraine claimed 562 Russian soldiers were being held as prisoners as of 19 March, with 10 previously reported released in prisoner exchanges for five Ukrainian soldiers and the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov. Subsequently, the first large prisoner exchange took place on 24 March, when 10 Russian and 10 Ukrainian soldiers, as well as 11 Russian and 19 Ukrainian civilian sailors, were exchanged. Among the released Ukrainian soldiers was one of 13 Ukrainian border-guard members captured during the Russian attack on Snake Island. Later, on 1 April 86 Ukrainian servicemen were exchanged for an unknown number of Russian troops.
Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, reported that a platoon of the 74th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade from Kemerovo Oblast surrendered to Ukraine, saying they "didn't know that they were brought to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians". Ukraine held a series of press conferences with about a dozen POWs, where the POWs made comments against the invasion, how they had been manipulated and for the conflict to end. According to The Guardian, while it was likely that Ukraine was using the discomfort of captured soldiers for propaganda purposes, still the videos succeeded in showing the Russian servicemen's "authentic sense" of regret for having come to Ukraine. Amnesty International said that Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention prohibits videos of captured soldiers. Captured Ukrainian soldiers with British citizenship were recorded calling for Boris Johnson to arrange for them to be freed in exchange for pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk. MP Robert Jenrick called the videos, broadcast separately on Russia-24, a "flagrant breach" of the Geneva Convention. A Russian spokeswoman claimed that she told Johnson in a phone call about the men's treatment that the UK should "show mercy" to Ukrainian citizens by stopping military aid to the Ukrainian government when asked to show the men mercy.
The head of the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for POW Treatment, Iryna Vereshchuk, raised concerns that Russia had not released information to Ukrainian authorities on the location of any Ukrainian POW's and the International Red Cross had not been allowed to see them, as of 16 March.
By 21 April, Russia claimed that 1,478 Ukrainian troops had been captured during the course of the siege of Mariupol. On 22 April, Yuri Sirovatko, Minister of Justice of the Donetsk People's Republic, claimed that some 3,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war were held in the territory of the DPR. On 20 May, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that 2,439 Ukrainian soldiers had been taken prisoner over the previous five days as a result of the surrender of the last defenders of Mariupol, entrenched inside the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works. On 26 May, Rodion Miroshnik, ambassador of the Luhansk People's Republic to Russia, claimed that around 8,000 Ukrainian POWs were held within the territory of the DPR and LPR. According to a statement by Sergei Shoigu, Russia's Minister of Defence, in early June 2022, 6,489 Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In a report by The Independent on 9 June, it cited an intelligence report that more than 5,600 Ukrainian soldiers had been captured, while the number of Russian servicemen being held as prisoners had fallen to 550, from 900 in April, following several prisoner exchanges. In contrast, the Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper claimed 1,000 Russian soldiers were being held as prisoners as of 20 June.
According to Ukraine, as of 30 December 2022, 3,392 Ukrainian servicemen were being held by Russia as prisoners of war, while 15,000 soldiers and civilians were missing. The ICMP also stated a month earlier that 15,000 people were missing since the start of the Russian invasion. The following day, 31 December 140 Ukrainian servicemen were released in a prisoner exchange, bringing the number of released prisoners from Russian captivity to 1,464 servicemen and 132 civilians. By 7 August, the number of prisoners released by Russia rose to 2,598. At least 800 Russian soldiers had also been confirmed to have been released by late February 2023.
A study of Russian prisoners of war captured by Ukraine found that 55% of the soldiers had been motivated to fight to "improve their livelihoods", while 36% were ideologically motivated.
See also
Outline of the Russo-Ukrainian War
The Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine
Casualties during the 2013–2014 Ukraine crisis
Military history of the Russian Federation
Notes
References
External links
Ukrainian war casualties
War in Donbas