Russia-Ukraine war enters its 5th year, but death toll still remains disputed. Here's why
Europe's largest war since WW2 may have reportedly consumed the lives of over two million people, but precise figures may remain elusive even after the war concludes.
Washington DC — Four years after the Russian troops and their military hardware entered Ukraine, which triggered Europe's largest conflict since the Second World War, determining an accurate or even estimated death toll has proven extraordinarily difficult.
In other conflict zones, such as Israel-besieged Gaza, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere, estimated death tolls are present.
Since Russia's war on Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, figures from international organisations, such as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), are described as "verified" minimums rather than comprehensive estimates.
Both Kiev and Moscow are handling the matter with considerable sensitivity. Ukraine cites security concerns, while Russia has ceased publishing a death toll entirely.
In early February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine had lost 55,000 soldiers since 2022.
According to the OHCHR, roughly 15,000 civilians in Ukraine have been killed during the war, stressing that the figure is likely much higher.
Conversely, Russia stated that it had lost 5,937 soldiers in the war. This figure was updated in September 2022, and Moscow has not released any further death toll information since then.
In January 2026, the US-based think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a study claiming that combined casualties could surpass 2 million, with Russia suffering roughly 1.2 million casualties, 325,000 of them killed.
Russian officials promptly dismissed the report as inaccurate, stating that official figures should be sourced exclusively from the government.
The BBC has claimed that it has identified the names of 186,102 Russian soldiers killed in the Ukraine war. "The military experts believe our analysis might represent 45-65 percent of the total, putting the potential number of Russian deaths at between 286,000 and 413,500."
According to the British broadcaster, "the number of Ukrainians killed is as high as 200,000."
Foreign fighters
But it is not only Russians and Ukrainians who have been fighting and dying.
North Korea has officially deployed thousands of troops to support Russian forces in Ukraine, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to 17,000 soldiers involved in combat operations, particularly in regions like Kursk.
Around 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited to fight alongside Russians in Ukraine so far, according to reports.
Reports suggest the Assad regime in Syria before its fall enlisted paid volunteers from its military to support Russian forces.
Mercenaries and fighters, fraudulently recruited from various nationalities, including Nepalese, Indian, Kenyan, Colombian, and Serbian, have also joined Russian forces.
Thousands of foreign fighters from over dozens of countries have travelled to Ukraine to fight against Russian forces, often joining the International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine.
Mercenaries from the US, Colombia, France, Belgium, Belarus, Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, and other nations have participated, fighting alongside Ukrainians.
Why do the figures widely vary?
It is common practice for countries involved in war to regard their overall troop numbers and losses as secret, so as not to give the enemy any information that might prove useful in prosecuting the war.
Speaking to TRT World, Arkady Moshes, Director for the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia research programme at the Finnish Institute of International and Foreign Affairs (FIIA), says admitting the real figures facilitates the planning of your enemy and gives it a card to play to its domestic audience.
In the case of Russia, he says Moscow "says it is conducting a special military operation, not a war, and admitting the real numbers of casualties might cause a shock even among the supporters of the policy — as it would be, for this matter, with admitting a real number of Russian prisoners of war (POWs), taken by Ukraine."
"It is not difficult to compare the number of people signing contracts with the military every month, and the casualties; if these figures are close, it will imply that most of the cohort of those volunteering dies; that would discourage enrollment, and Russia may have to return to the mobilisation, which it is hesitant to do. Potentially, protests against the war may erupt," argues Moshes, an expert on Russian and Ukrainian foreign policy as well as European-Russian relations.
As for Ukraine, he says "admitting the (accurate) numbers may discourage certain groups of the population to continue fighting or support the continuing resistance. In particular, those men of the draft age who fled Ukraine, will not be willing to return."
Moshes notes differing methodologies also contribute to the varying tolls.
"A correct one would put together dead soldiers and those whose wounds would not allow them to return to the front – but this is a dynamic process and a likelihood of an error is huge; and quite often, the international sources put together all dead and wounded — it is not surprising that the numbers will grow enormously and become misleading," he says.
"Separate from that, those missing in action are added to the number of casualties with a huge delay; technically, this is correct — a person can be a PoW and later be found alive, but still, it adds to the confusion."
Hilary Appel, Podlich Family Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College, highlights the strategic reasons for not sharing the actual toll.
"Those with the accurate information would rather not share it for both domestic legitimacy reasons and to avoid letting the other side know how deep their reserves of fighters are," Appel, an expert on foreign policy of Russia and Eastern Europe, tells TRT World.
"If high casualty numbers are known to the general population it could make new conscripts more difficult to secure, undermine the morale of existing soldiers and embolden their adversaries. For this reason, it is a policy not to share numbers."
"External organisations can only estimate the numbers indirectly. Some organisations may have incentives to estimate more or less conservatively," she adds.
However, the discrepancies between verified information and assumptions highlight a stark reality of the Russia-Ukraine war: ongoing conflict, displacement, and limited access mean that the majority of fatalities remain statistically invisible.