Deaths in Ukraine So Far

As of Thurs at 11am the reports mark Russians loses at 2500 deaths and injured.

More than 850,000 people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries since the war began and many have been killed – the Russian invasion has already had a devastating impact.

But it is still unclear how many soldiers and civilians have been killed and calculating the human cost is challenging – and likely still will be even once the war has ended. 

Misinformation is rife in modern warfare – and information released by the Russian Government is particularly untrustworthy – so gathering verified data on military deaths in Ukraine is difficult.

In all conflicts, casualty estimates can often differ due to discrepancies between sources and in how the death toll is calculated.  For example, was the death a direct or indirect cause of the war? Have civilians been included?

So what do we know so far about the military loss of life in Ukraine? How does the war compare to others around the world? Here we explain what you need to know about military deaths in war and how they compare with conflicts involving the UK, US and allied troops.

What do we know so far about Russian and Ukrainian deaths?

Despite it only being on its seventh day it is estimated that thousands have already died due to the conflict in Ukraine but the actual death toll remains very unclear.

Ukrainian officials said around 3,500 Russian troops had been killed or injured as of Saturday (26 Saturday), as reported by Reuters. Their estimate had risen to over 5,000 as of 28 February, according to the BBC, which was reporting on a Facebook post from the Ukrainian defense ministry.

No figures have yet been independently verified and should not be taken at face value – but if the Ukrainian Government’s claims are accurate, it would mean Russia has already suffered more casualties than the US during 16 years in Iraq.  

The Ukrainian death toll of civilians is thought to be well over 100. Yesterday (1 March) the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recorded at least 536 civilian casualties, including 136 killed, between 24 and 28 February. It is feared that the real figures will be much higher.

It is not clear how many Ukrainian soldiers have died but yesterday (1 March) it was announced that at least 70 were killed after Russian artillery struck a military base. Dmytro Zhyvytsky, the head of the region, said Russian soldiers and some local residents had also been killed in the fighting in Okhtyrka.

All that is truly clear is that the Ukrainian-Russian war death toll is increasing by the day.

How do other wars compare to Ukraine and the Russian war?

No war is ever comparable but estimated death figures can give us an idea of how much countries have suffered as a result of the conflict.

The US and UK, for example, have been heavily involved in conflicts concentrated in the Middle East in recent years, with their militaries losing thousands of lives.

Figures sourced from a report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University show the US experienced a heavy loss in Iraq (March 2003 to October 2019) with the country losing 4,572 military personnel. Other allied forces lost 323 troops during the conflict.

While the US lost seven troops during the Syrian/ISIS conflict (September 2014 to October 2019), Allied forces as a whole lost a huge 11,000 troops. This includes thousands of Kurdish fighters.

Direct war deaths of military personnel in major war zones

Refer to the notes below the chart for information on the time period of each conflict

The numbers included here are approximations based on the reporting of several original data sources published by Brown University  

Figures included in the report are all approximates and gathered from various sources.

How does the UK’s loss of military life compare to other conflicts?

Another source of verified information comes from the UK Government’s Ministry of Defence, which publishes data on deaths of UK armed forces for each medal-earning operation since World War II.

According to the latest figures, covering the period 3 September 1945 to 28 February 2021, UK armed forces have been involved in 33 medal-earning operations resulting in 7,190 deaths. The deaths are a result of hostile action as well as other causes.

According to the figures, the conflict in Malaya (also known as The Malayan Emergency), has been the bloodiest for UK troops. The operation ran from 16 June 1948 to 31 July 1960 and 1,442 armed personnel lost their lives. 

Operation Banner – the name for the British armed forces operation in Northern Ireland between 14 August 1969 to 31 July 2007 – resulted in the second-highest death toll for UK troops. In total 1,441 deaths were recorded during this operation.

The UK has not experienced a high operational-related death toll in many years. The number of deaths in a single year peaked in 1951 when 829 deaths were recorded. This was as a result of deaths in Korea, Malaya, and the Canal Zone.

How many deaths have been caused by the conflict in Ukraine and Russia?

Data sourced from the Conflict Data Program at Sweden’s Uppsala University shows the number of deaths caused by conflict.

These differ from the previous figures we have used, as they include deaths of civilians as well as military personnel. The figures also count the number of deaths which have occurred in each country, rather than of a country’s citizens abroad.

But the data still gives a clearer picture of how thousands of lives have been lost due to conflicts in Ukraine and Russia.

Between 1989 and 2020, 7,101 lives had been lost in Ukraine due to conflict with the highest death toll being recorded due to fighting in 2014 when 4,441 deaths were recorded, likely as a result of the annexation of Crimea.

Battle-related deaths in Russia during the same time period are recorded at 25,599, with the most being recorded in 1999 when 6,197 deaths were recorded likely due to fighting in Chechnya.