Ukrainian forces suffer 525K to 625K casualties according to major war study

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has published what may be the most comprehensive casualty assessment of the Ukraine war to date, estimating that Ukrainian military losses, including killed, wounded, and missing, fall between 500,000 and 600,000 from February 2022 through December 2025. Some secondary analyses place the figure slightly higher, in the range of 525,000 to 625,000.

To put that in perspective, those numbers represent one of the highest battlefield casualty rates experienced by a major military force since World War II. The CSIS report estimates Ukrainian fatalities alone at roughly 100,000 to 140,000 over the nearly four-year period.

The full picture is even grimmer

Russia has absorbed even heavier losses. The study estimates Russian military casualties at nearly 1.2 million, with fatalities ranging from 275,000 to 325,000. Combined, the two sides may have suffered up to 1.8 million casualties through the end of 2025.

That combined figure could reach 2 million by spring 2026, according to the CSIS projections. For context, the entire population of Slovenia is about 2.1 million people.

Earlier Ukrainian government figures from December 2024 had cited 43,000 killed and 370,000 injured. The CSIS numbers suggest the actual toll may be meaningfully higher than what official channels had previously acknowledged.

The asymmetry in the casualty figures is worth noting. Russia’s estimated losses outpace Ukraine’s by roughly a 2-to-1 ratio, which tracks with the offensive posture Moscow has maintained through much of the conflict. Attacking forces historically sustain higher casualties than defenders, and the data here follows that pattern.

What this means for geopolitical risk pricing

The Ukraine conflict has been a persistent backdrop for crypto markets since February 2022. In the war’s early days, Bitcoin and other digital assets saw significant flows as Ukrainians used crypto to move value across borders and the Ukrainian government itself solicited donations in digital currencies.

The CSIS report doesn’t mention cryptocurrency or digital assets at all. That absence is itself informative. The institutions producing serious conflict analysis have moved past the 2022 moment when crypto was part of the Ukraine war story.

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