Russia lost more than 1,500 troops and over 100 armored and logistical vehicles over the past day, Ukraine's military said on Wednesday, taking its total casualties to almost half a million people.
Moscow's forces have sustained a total of 486,940 casualties since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to figures published by the Ukrainian military on Wednesday. Russia also lost 48 armored fighting vehicles, 14 tanks and almost 50 other assorted vehicles in the previous 24 hours, the General Staff said in an update.
Newsweek couldn't independently verify Kyiv's tally, and reached out to the Russian defense ministry for comment via email.
Casualty counts and equipment losses are notoriously difficult to pin down, and experts caution that both sides likely inflate the other's reported losses, rarely talking about their own. But Ukraine's figures do offer some indication of the scale of the war's impact as Russia pushes a new offensive in northeastern Ukraine that has led to intense fighting.
On Friday, Russia opened up a new front on the Russian border into Ukraine's Kharkiv region. Clashes throughout the war have been mostly concentrated in eastern and southern Ukraine. Ukrainian officials and Western analysts say Russia is hoping to force Ukraine to redirect scarce resources from other frontline battles to the northeast.
Russian attacks across the frontline away from Kharkiv have increased during the offensive in the northeast, Lieutenant Colonel Nazar Voloshyn, a spokesperson for the Khortytsia group of Ukrainian forces fighting in eastern and northeastern Ukraine, told Newsweek on Tuesday.
On Monday, just days into the new offensive, Ukraine's military said Russia had lost 1,740 troops in a single day, marking the highest number of daily Russian casualties reported by Ukraine since February 2022.
The U.K. defense ministry estimated earlier this month that Russian casualties likely stand at more than 465,000 since February 2022. French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné told Latvia-based Novaya Gazeta Europe in an interview published on May 3 that Paris put total Russian casualties at around 500,000, with around 150,000 fighters killed.
The BBC's Russian service and Russian independent outlet Mediazona reported in mid-April that at least 50,000 Russian soldiers had been confirmed dead.
Moscow hasn't commented to its own losses since September 2022, when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said just under 6,000 Russian fighters had been killed.
Ukraine has also suffered heavy losses, and rarely offers updates on the toll of fending off Russian assaults. In late February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed in two years of war. Russia has said Ukraine's death toll is much higher, saying Kyiv lost 215,000 soldiers in 2023 alone.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more
