Two years ago Russia launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine, displacing millions of people and destroying homes and businesses across the country.

FactCheck takes a look at how many casualties of war there have been on both sides of the conflict – and what experts think could happen next.

How many Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians have died?

In December 2023, a declassified US intelligence assessment shared with Congress said, according to a congressional source, that there were 315,000 dead and injured Russian military personnel as a result of the war – nearly 90 per cent of the pre-war 360,000 soldiers.

But the issue of military deaths and injuries is sensitive in both Russia and Ukraine, and Russia has not released any official figures regarding military deaths.

In May last year, a Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel said 22,000 fighters for Wagner (a private Russian military group) had been killed in Russia’s war in Ukraine, but FactCheck can’t verify this.

A Ukrainian civic group said in November 2023 that it had confirmed the deaths of nearly 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers since the invasion began by using open sources, and put the total toll at more than 30,000.

But again, FactCheck cannot verify these numbers and Ukraine treats the number of military deaths as a state secret so the total is not officially known.

In its latest report, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said there have been 30,457 civilian casualties since 24 February 2022. This comprised 10,582 killed and 19,875 injured.

FactCheck hasn’t been able to verify how many Russian civilians may have died on home soil since the country launched its attack on Russia.

Ukraine has launched a number of drone attacks inside Russia, but official death tolls from these are not known.

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